KOSPI-listed companies with total consolidated assets of 30 trillion won or more will carry ESG disclosure obligations from 2028. Fiscal 2027 is the reference year, and the following year, 2029, the scope comes down to KOSPI-listed companies with total consolidated assets of 10 trillion won or more. The Financial Services Commission held the fourth Productive Finance Transformation Meeting on Feb. 25, 2026, at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul, presided over by Chairman Lee Eok-won, and released a draft roadmap for institutionalizing ESG disclosure with these details.
The operating method has two stages. In the early period of introduction it will run as exchange disclosure, and once the system settles it will move to statutory disclosure. Safe harbor provisions apply to disclosures containing forecast and estimate information, and in the early operation of the system, sanctions will not be put first, with weight placed on guidance and consulting.
The scope of disclosure is built on ISSB standards, with only climate items made mandatory. Sustainability matters outside climate, the internal carbon price per ton, and industry-specific indicators remain voluntary disclosures that companies may choose. Scope 3, which covers emissions across the value chain, has been pushed back three years, with 2031 (fiscal 2030) as the start date.
Measures to ease the burden were also included in the draft. Value chain partner firms that are not in high-carbon-emitting industries and that qualify as small enterprises under the Framework Act on Small and Medium Enterprises are excluded from the disclosure obligation, and the extent of this exemption will be reworked after the shift to disclosure under the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act. A plan to exclude domestic and overseas subsidiaries whose assets and sales fall short of 10% on a consolidated basis, limited to 2028, the first year of disclosure, was also presented.
The submission date is the end of March in principle. For greenhouse gas emissions, a plan to open disclosure in mid-August is under review, taking into account the schedule under which certification by the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment ends around May each year.
Overseas cases were consulted in designing the timetable. Japan's plan to apply disclosure from June 2027 to companies with a market capitalization of 3 trillion yen or more on the Prime Market, and the fact that some large Korean companies face EU extraterritorial disclosure obligations in 2029, were placed alongside it. There is also an observation that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission intends to require climate risk and emissions information from large listed companies from 2026, though conflicting accounts remain over whether it will take effect.
The funding plan paired with the disclosure obligation comes to 790 trillion won. It is climate finance to be supplied over the 10 years from 2026 to 2035 to meet the 2035 national greenhouse gas reduction target, and the total has grown considerably compared with the previous plan of 420 trillion won. More than 70% of the new funds go to small and mid-sized companies, and more than 50% to the provinces. Korean-style transition finance aimed at facility efficiency improvements and fuel switching in carbon-intensive industries such as steel, chemicals and cement will also be newly established.
For support infrastructure, a climate finance web portal and a financed emissions platform centered on the Korea Credit Information Services are being prepared. The transition finance guidelines are designed to include both a K-Taxonomy basis and a basis in industry-specific carbon reduction implementation roadmaps.
The draft is not final. The Financial Services Commission will take comments until the end of March 2026 and then release the finalized system in April. For a company falling at the 30 trillion won threshold, the remaining month is the period for filing opinions, and after that the practical schedule of gathering fiscal 2027 data awaits.
