The release of the final ESG disclosure plan, which would require companies to report greenhouse gas emissions and governance information, keeps being postponed. The Financial Services Commission put out a draft roadmap on Feb. 25, 2026, and is working out a final plan that would make mandatory the disclosures now left to companies' discretion. The target date moved from the first quarter past April to May, and no announcement had been made as of early this month. Over the same period, the European Union is pursuing an overhaul that cuts ESRS disclosure data points by 70%.
The backbone of the draft is phased application. From 2028, KOSPI-listed companies with consolidated assets of 30 trillion won or more would be subject to the requirement, and 58 companies are identified as covered in the first year. Scope 3, the indirect emissions across the value chain, is given a three-year grace period and applies from 2031. The draft says the system would run initially as exchange disclosure and then convert to statutory disclosure, but the timing of that conversion was not written into the draft.
The National Pension Service Investment Management on March 30, 2026, submitted an opinion under the name of Chief Investment Officer Suh Won-joo to the Financial Services Commission and the Korea Accounting Institute, among others, calling for the draft to be supplemented. The core of the request is moving the timing forward by two years. It calls for pulling the applicable fiscal year forward to fiscal 2026 so that disclosure begins in 2027, and widening the scope to KOSPI-listed companies with consolidated assets of 2 trillion won or more. It also called for cutting the Scope 3 grace period to one to two years, making it mandatory around 2029, and specifying in the roadmap the timing of the conversion to statutory disclosure.
The gap between the draft and the National Pension Service's request is not small. The asset threshold differs 15-fold, 30 trillion won against 2 trillion won, the start year splits between 2028 and 2027, and mandatory Scope 3 between 2031 and around 2029. Under the request, the number of covered companies would rise sharply from 58.
Political intervention has also followed. Four agencies, the Financial Services Commission, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, attended a party-government consultation in early April 2026, and Democratic Party lawmakers criticized the FSC draft. The ruling party introduced six related bills, including ones converting exchange disclosure into statutory disclosure. President Lee Jae-myung has mentioned strengthening disclosure through an approach requiring repeated disclosures when fatal accidents recur, following the 2025 workplace deaths at POSCO E&C and other firms.
Lee Dong-jin, presidential secretary for growth economy, requested an urgent meeting with National Pension Service Chief Investment Officer Suh Won-joo in early April 2026 and held a separate meeting. It came three days after the fact that the National Pension Service had submitted its opinion became known outside. No official explanation of the meeting has come from the presidential office or the National Pension Service.
Timelines abroad are ahead of Korea's. The start of mandatory ESG disclosure falls in 2025 for Europe, 2026 for the United States and Australia, and 2027 for Japan. Korea's 2028 under the draft is the latest among them.
Yet the fact that Europe, which started earliest, has moved toward an overhaul cutting ESRS data points by 70% is shaking the premise of the domestic discussion. The baseline date for the reduction and whether it has been finalized have not been confirmed.
That is why the domestic delay does not look like pure administrative lag alone. As the region that led on standards strips out a large share of required items, a system starting late has to decide anew what level to match. If the pension fund's demand to widen the scope and the international move to reduce items work at the same time, the final plan may adjust the two axes of covered companies and disclosure items separately. Either way, conditions make it hard for the draft to be finalized as it stands.
The draft's own wording also needs sorting out. The disclosure scope is circulating with different asset measures and market ranges, as "listed companies with assets of 30 trillion won or more" and as "KOSPI-listed companies with consolidated assets of 30 trillion won or more." Which companies fall on the line changes depending on whether separate or consolidated financial statements are the basis. The figure of 58 companies also takes on meaning only once this basis is settled.
Companies need to check whether the final plan pins the threshold to consolidated assets and whether it keeps the Scope 3 grace period at three years. If either moves toward the National Pension Service's request, the preparation period shrinks from three years to one. A new date for the announcement has not been posted, and half of May remains.
