Abstract
This paper compares the different terrestrial hunting (licence) systems of Japan and South Korea. In order to test their sustainable resource use the silvicultural model and categories by Josef Hackl, Felix Heckl, Martin Forstner, Wolfgang Lexer, and Friedrich Reimoser have been adapted and modified to the circumstances of these two nations. Sustainability will be analysed according to three columns of ecological, economic, and socio-cultural sustainability. The multidisciplinary theoretical approach to sustainability discourses includes the theories of public goods, property rights, and co-management strategies, based on Garrett Hardin’s controversial essay The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin’s resource exploitation dilemma has been refuted many times. The working hypothesis is therefore based on a bottom-up approach of decentralisation and subsidiarity mainly based on the assumptions of Elinor Ostrom and Fikret Berkes, in which the preservation of local and therefore context-bound knowledge plays a significant role in the sustainable management of impure public goods like game. The paper seeks to compare current laws on hunting, weapons, wildlife, and environmental protection as well as to take a look at existing local hunting customs and the historic reasons for their disappearance.