More than half of the green finance supplied by South Korea's policy financial institutions last year did not meet government standards, raising concerns about 'greenwashing'.
The South Korean government has been accelerating the expansion of climate finance, which includes green finance and transition finance, but less than half of the outputs reported by policy financial institutions like the Export-Import Bank and Korea Development Bank met the government's standards. According to data submitted to the National Assembly by Democratic Party lawmaker Min Byung-deok, the five major policy financial institutions reported supplying 69.4 trillion won in green finance according to their own standards, surpassing the government's target of 51.7 trillion won. However, when analyzed under the 'Korean Green Classification System' (K-Taxonomy), which serves as the governmental benchmark for classifying green finance, the actual compliance fell to only 32.1 trillion won, or 46.3% of their reported figures.
