Recently, the tropospheric ozone has gained a global attention for its adverse effect on vegetation as well as its contribution to the global warming. Although a number of studies have been carried out for the urban ozone, the effect of ozone on vegetation is still largely unknown in Korea. The present work aimed at performing the first evaluation of forest damage by ozone using the national air monitoring data from the year 2000 to the year 2005. Moreover, it also explored the relevance of adverse effect of ozone to the recent events on leaf chlorosis of black locust, Robinia pseudo-acacia, leading to early foliage widely observed in Korea since 2001. In the nineties, forest damages caused by ozone such as leaf chlorosis occurred in Europe and North America and led to invoke comprehensive field and laboratory studies. As a result, AOT40, implying the accumulated dose over a threshold 40 ppb, was developed to assess the forest damage by ozone. 19 air monitoring stations were selected across Korea to calculate AOT40 from the year 2000 to the year 2005. The calculated AOT40 generally increased during April and May and reached the maximum after May. The increase of AOT40 diminished substantially from the mid-June as the rainy season started. The calculated AOT40 in the nine rural sites from the year 2002 to th ε year 2005 ranged from 6.8 to 29.4 ppm-hr. And all the AOT40 at th ε year 2005 exceeded the critical value of 10 ppm-hr for forest damage. Morevoer the calculated AOT40 of Korea appeared higher than the AOT40 of Europe in the year 2004/2005 and comparable to the AOT40 of China in the year 2000. Despite the high levels of the calculated AOT40 since the year 2001 and the consistency of time of seasons between high AOT40 values and occurrence of chlorosis of black locust, further studies are required to conclude that the chlorosis of black locust occurred from the year 2001 to the year 2005 were resulted from a damage by ozone.