The shape of Korea's sustainability disclosure system will emerge this week. The Financial Services Commission plans to release the final domestic sustainability disclosure standard along with a draft roadmap on February 25, 2026. The Korea Accounting Institute is understood to be scheduled to hold the "First 2026 Korea Sustainability Standards Board (KSSB)" meeting a day later, on the 26th, to approve the version of the disclosure standard to be submitted to the government. If the two-day process proceeds as planned, the mandatory ESG disclosure timeline, which has been pushed back several times since January 2021, will have a standard in documented form for the first time.
The point of contention is the extent of the deferral. The version to be submitted to the government includes Scope 3 emissions among the items subject to mandatory disclosure, but defers their application for three years after disclosure begins. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) set a one-year deferral for the same item, a two-year difference from the Korean version.
Why Scope 3 is at the center of the debate becomes clear from the classification of emissions. Scope 1 covers emissions a company releases directly, and Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from the use of energy such as electricity and steam. Scope 3 covers the entire supply chain, including the extraction and transport of raw materials, the use and disposal of products, and suppliers. It is the only item for which a company must gather data from outside its own worksites, and this is also why the ISSB made it a mandatory core disclosure item.
The coordinates of the standard have been set internationally. IFRS S1 and S2, created by the ISSB, serve as the baseline for global disclosure frameworks, and more than 40 major jurisdictions have decided to adopt them fully or to reference them. The United Kingdom is pursuing the introduction of the UK SRS for listed companies, and the EU operates the CSRD and ESRS framework. Some Asian countries are also going through the process of adopting IFRS S1 and S2.
A shared direction does not mean a shared implementation timetable. In 2025, the EU substantially pared down taxonomy disclosure items through its omnibus package and delegated act. Data points for non-financial companies fell by 64% and those for financial institutions by 89%, reorganizing the framework around core indicators. The scope of application of the CSRD and CSDDD was also adjusted, and interpretations differ over whether to see this as a regulatory retreat or as refinement toward a workable level.
As the number of items has fallen, verification fills the gap. The level of third-party verification required by the CSRD and California's climate disclosure law is designed to rise from the current "limited assurance" to "reasonable assurance." The California law imposes disclosure obligations that include Scope 3. In a policy brief published in February 2026, ESG Book pointed to "data quality and oversight" as the trend running through this year, meaning that whether the emissions figures written in a report can withstand verification has become more important than how many reports are issued.
Real costs are added on top of this. The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) enters its full taxation phase from 2026. Supply chain emissions have entered a stretch in which they function as a disclosure item and a cost item at the same time. The longer the deferral period, the further back a company's preparation burden is pushed, but if supply chain data is not accumulated in the meantime, the burden at the end of the deferral will grow accordingly.
Discussions on the system's design continued right up to the announcement. On February 4, 2026, the Financial Services Commission held the sixth meeting of the ESG Finance Task Force at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Jung-gu, Seoul, and discussed the main points of contention with relevant ministries, related institutions, industry, investors, and experts. Vice Chairman Kwon Dae-young said at the meeting that the government is referring to overseas cases such as the EU and Japan. The following day, February 5, the office of Democratic Party lawmaker Min Byoung-dug and the Korea Sustainability Assurance Forum jointly held a debate on legislation related to sustainability management disclosure.
The timing of the first disclosure is expected to be set somewhere between March 2027, when Japan introduces its system, and 2029, when disclosure by non-EU companies begins in the EU. The asset thresholds for companies subject to the rules, the schedule for phased expansion, and the third-party verification provisions are matters to be confirmed in this announcement. The effectiveness of the deferral clause is not determined by the length of the deferral period. It is decided by what is built up during that period.
Two days of schedule remain, the 25th and the 26th. When the text of the standard is released, it will also show where the three-year deferral starts counting and at what level the verification obligation is set. Those two lines will determine the total volume of data work that Korean companies will bear over the next several years.
