South Korea is among the EU’s largest iron and steel suppliers, so CBAM reaches a substantial share of its mill output, yet the charge can be set installation by installation where verified data is supplied. Iron and steel are priced on direct embedded emissions only, so a Korean mill’s cost turns on its production route and verified data, not one national rate.
CBAM applies to South Korean iron and steel the way it applies to every covered origin. Certificates are owed by the authorised CBAM declarant: an importer established in the EU, or an indirect customs representative acting for an importer. They cover the embedded emissions of each consignment, minus the free allocation adjustment, and for iron and steel only direct emissions are counted. That makes the production route the decisive factor. Scrap-based electric-arc-furnace steel carries the lowest embedded carbon, direct-reduced-iron routes sit in the middle, and the blast-furnace to basic-oxygen-furnace route carries the highest. Two Korean mills shipping the same grade can therefore face very different charges.
How a Korean mill’s charge is set
The charge is built from a small number of inputs rather than a flat national rate:
- Identify the production route and the product CN heading, because default values are published per product and per country of origin.
- Where verified installation data is not supplied, that country-of-origin default applies, carried at a mark-up of 10 percent in 2026, 20 percent in 2027 and 30 percent from 2028.
- Verified installation data can declare below the default, which usually lowers the certificate count.
- Where no value is published for a given origin and product, a fallback default applies, such as 3.48 tonnes of CO2e per tonne for pig iron.
- Certificates cover those emissions minus the free allocation adjustment. That deduction shrinks each year: the CBAM factor is 97.5 percent in 2026, and from 2034 nothing is deducted for free allocation. In 2026, 2.5 percent of the benchmark is no longer deducted. That figure is not 2.5 percent of the embedded emissions.
South Korea among EU steel suppliers
The EU imported about EUR 39.4 billion of iron and steel in 2024, and South Korea was one of the leading origins.
| Origin | Iron and steel to the EU, 2024 |
|---|---|
| India | about EUR 3.9 billion |
| South Korea | about EUR 3.6 billion |
| China | about EUR 3.5 billion |
| Türkiye | about EUR 3.5 billion |
| United Kingdom | about EUR 3.1 billion |
| Russia | about EUR 2.6 billion |
| Vietnam | about EUR 2.2 billion |
For a Korean exporter the work is specific: confirm the production route for each product, gather verified emissions data for the installation, and keep that data with the consignment so the authorised declarant can use it in the CBAM declaration. GreenSutra’s consultants often find a single national figure assumed to cover an entire catalogue, when each grade and installation is assessed on its own data. CBAM advisory covers declarant status, embedded-emissions calculation and certificate accounting for this route-by-route assessment, and the CBAM guide sets out the verified data fields an EU importer expects.
Sources: Regulation (EU) 2023/956 · Eurostat · European Commission CBAM