The Korea Foundation for Cooperation of Large & Small Business, Rural Affairs (Win-Win Cooperation Foundation) said it will publish the "ESG Standard Guidelines for Small and Medium Enterprises" on Jan. 29. The purpose of the publication is to help suppliers respond to global supply chain ESG due diligence and to sustainability management demands at home and abroad. The revised edition has 79 indicators, 15 more than the previous 64.
ESG due diligence refers to an investigative process that identifies, manages and improves potential environmental, social and governance risks that may arise in a company's business activities and across its supply chain. For a prime contractor to report its own emissions and its human rights management practices, information has to come up from the supplier level, so due diligence demands travel down through trading relationships. Tighter regulation, including the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), has been cited as the background to this trend.
The way the indicators were increased differs by area. The environmental area kept existing core issues such as greenhouse gases, energy and resource circulation as they were. On the social and governance side, items covering human rights, safety and health, fair trade and ethical management were reinforced to reflect the latest global norms and requirements. How the 15 added indicators were divided among the areas can only be compared after the published edition is released.
The starting point for this document is the 2020 "CSR Standard Guidelines for Small and Medium Enterprises." It has since been revised each year to reflect domestic and international ESG standards and changes in laws and systems, and this edition follows that line. The number of small and medium enterprises that have used the guidelines through supplier ESG support programs is put at a cumulative 2,167 companies.
The foundation cited Hanul Saengyak and Sunbo Industrial Co. as cases of use. It explained that after building ESG management systems through the guidelines, the companies went on to expand sales channels and increase exports. How much revenue or exports rose against which base year was not presented. The secretary general is Byun Tae-seob.
Apart from standardizing the document, an attempt to build a channel for actually exchanging the information also surfaced in the same week. Chung Hee-tae, CEO of AIPIM, a manufacturing AI solutions company, said he is pushing to build a national digital network for exchanging supply chain carbon data (the i-DEA Data Space). Chung concurrently serves as head of the Data Space Division at the Digital ESG Alliance (i-DEA). i-DEA opened in 2025, saying it would help domestic companies respond to carbon regulation.
AIPIM's company name is short for "AI +in Manufacturing," and an AI platform for manufacturing sites was its starting point. It has now shifted its business axis to developing carbon emissions data management solutions. Behind that lies a change that exporting companies are experiencing earlier than others. As the scope of emissions information demanded by trading partners extends beyond a single company to the supplier tier, how to connect the data has emerged as a separate task.
Variables remain on the regulatory side. The EU Omnibus package is a set of amendments intended to ease administrative burdens and regulation for companies in the bloc, covering the CSDDD, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Depending on how the amendments and the schedules for enforcement and deferral are settled, the timing at which due diligence demands reach domestic suppliers may also change. The national digital network has likewise not had its target date and scope of participation confirmed.
Whether the guidelines document and the data network plan are institutionally linked is a separate matter. The demands suppliers face converge on the same two things either way. The 79 indicators that set what to measure, and the channel that sets where to send what has been measured. For small and medium enterprises that will carry the burden of responding, the immediate practical work is checking which of the revised indicators the items their own trading partners require fall under.
