The amount that five policy finance institutions counted as green finance supplied over the course of 2025 is 69.4 trillion won. Applying the government's Korean Green Taxonomy (K-Taxonomy) to the same results brings the figure down to 32.1 trillion won. That is 46.3% of the institutions' own tally. The institutions covered are the Korea Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of Korea, the Industrial Bank of Korea, the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund and the Korea Technology Finance Corporation.
The green finance supply target the government set for these institutions in 2025 was 51.7 trillion won. Judged by the institutions' own standard alone, the results exceed the target by more than 17 trillion won. The 32.1 trillion won calculated under the government taxonomy falls more than 19 trillion won short of that same target. Whether the target was met flips to the opposite answer depending on which yardstick is used.
The gap varies widely by institution. At the Export-Import Bank of Korea, only 3.7 trillion won of its own tally of 23.1 trillion won fit the government taxonomy. For the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund the figure was 200 billion won out of 12.4 trillion won, and for the Korea Technology Finance Corporation 300 billion won out of 6 trillion won. The Korea Development Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea, by contrast, showed no difference in results between the two standards, and individual amounts for the two banks were not provided.
The tally was released by the office of Rep. Min Byoung-dug of the Democratic Party of Korea on the National Assembly's National Policy Committee, which received it from the Financial Services Commission. The recalculation applying the K-Taxonomy was carried out by the Financial Services Commission. Rep. Min said policy finance institutions should apply the Korean Green Taxonomy in place of their own yardsticks to block the risk of greenwashing, and should also review the results of private financial companies.
Behind the difference lies the nature of the K-Taxonomy. The taxonomy sets out criteria for environmentally friendly green activities but carries no legal force. There are no grounds to penalize an institution that builds up results under its own standard, and so the same project is counted as green on one side and non-green on the other. An official at the financial authorities explained that each institution has procedures to prevent greenwashing but that there are aspects that make it difficult to align the standards into one, and that unification is being pursued through working-level consultations.
Results in the private financial sector differ in scale to begin with. The amount six financial groups, including KB, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, NH Nonghyup and JB, supplied as climate finance in 2025 is 907.7 billion won. The green asset ratio at these groups, meaning the share of green loans and similar assets against total assets, came in below 1% for all of them. While policy finance deals in trillions, the private sector remains in the hundreds of billions.
The Financial Services Commission, in releasing measures to promote climate finance last month, newly incorporated the concept of transition finance and set the total climate finance to be supplied through 2035 at 790 trillion won. The measures also included a plan to place a web portal at the Korea Credit Information Services so that the financial sector can verify whether a given project is eligible for climate finance support. Depending on the standard by which the 790 trillion won total is calculated, there is room for the 37 trillion won gap that opened in 2025 to widen as it is.
The definition of supply results is also up for sorting out. The figure a single institution reports changes depending on whether it is new business or outstanding balance, and on how far it includes loans, guarantees and investments. The outcome of the work to unify standards through working-level consultations has not been settled. Until a unified yardstick emerges, green finance supply figures make sense only when read together with the standard used by whoever announced them.
