Not so in all cases, there were people living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia when Shenandoah National Park was created. They were displaced by the government and in many cases had no idea about the plan for the park until they were sent letters to vacate. My ex-wife’s mother was from the Cave family and lived up there.
Korea has national parks with great hiking.
I asked my friend from the Phillipines and he said years ago they had some but after martial law it was stopped.
France has many national parks, but even though the country is less densely populated than the rest of western Europe, they are quite similar to what was described above re. the UK. They’re much smaller than what an American might have in mind, and aren’t “wilderness”. They include villages, roads, etc…
There’s not much “national park culture”, either. People don’t go to national parks for vacations. They visit whatever is worth seeing when they happen to be in the area. For instance for a day.
There’s not much camping culture, either. When people camp, it’s in established campgrounds, with amenities (and more and more of them recently), and not to be alone in the wild, but to be near the beach resort or whatever for cheap.
The only people actually camping the “American way” are youngsters wanting to avoid having to pay for accomodations. And even then, it isn’t extremely common. You don’t have the kind of family camping in the wild depicted in American movies, for instance. And besides, lacking roaming laws (except on the seashore) in France, this kind of camping (called in French “wild camping” which is understood as meaning “camping in a not recognized way” not “camping in the wild”) isn’t legal without the land owner agreement, and is generally very discouraged (and I would suspect even more so in national parks, in fact).
For different reasons provincially operated parks in Quebec are called national parks. This isn’t just confined to parks; the provincial legislature is the National Assembly of Quebec.
Plenty in Africa. China and India as well.
Korea has 21 of them. There are lots of stores in the big cities dedicated to hiking gear and clothing.