In South Korea, there are stretches of *forest* where the trees are all planted in nice neat rows. During their occupation of the peninsula, the Japanese had removed vast swaths of lumber for their military/industrial efforts, leaving much of the landscape denuded. This was still pretty much the case in 1950, so you'll see very little woodland in pictures from the Korean war. Much of the forested areas of the ROK have been planted since 1953.
As of late, tribalism, limits the powers of a country. The flip side, unity of 'race' creates a dangerous path, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.
It will be interesting, how China fares in the future, though they have many different factions and sub-cultures within it.