[BrendaAnnD]

Woodworking materials are just not readily available. There are furniture makers here, but it's a fairly recent development. In the past, using wood for most anything was actively discouraged. The reason for this is that during and before WWII, the Japanese occupied the peninsula and pretty much stripped it bare of trees and took the wood back to Japan. As I'm sure you're aware, trees grow very slowly. It's difficult now to tell it was so barren here, but to get to this point took a lot of active reforestation and conservation.