Nearly every Korean exporter is now asked for carbon data. Two-thirds re-type it by hand

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation released a survey of 300 exporting companies on the 20th showing that 99.3% have already been asked, or expect to be asked, by their customers to submit carbon emissions data ^[1]. The same survey found that 66.3% manage that data on in-house systems such as ERP with no shared standard platform, which is how a compliance requirement turns into a permanent administrative cost ^[4].

The demand is not one-directional. Alongside the 99.3% receiving requests, 90.3% said that as customers themselves they require or plan to require emissions data from their own suppliers ^[2]. That is the mechanism by which CBAM and mandatory ESG disclosure stop being a European regulatory matter and become a condition of doing business at every tier ^[3]. On a base of 300 firms, roughly 298 are already inside that chain ^[11].

The work itself is manual. In a multiple-response question, 42.4% said they reprocess and re-enter data item by item using spreadsheets and handwritten documents, and 38.8% said they fill in customers' individual templates ^[5]. Because standards and formats differ from company to company, according to the two organizations, errors and administrative inefficiency accumulate in producing and linking the data ^[6]. This is duplicated effort, not new capability: the same emissions figure gets restated in as many formats as there are buyers.

Firms know what they want. Support for standardized formats and templates was cited by 64.0%, and a collaboration platform for exchanging data by 53.7% ^[7]. What stops adoption is money and people: 64.0% pointed to the cost of building and connecting systems, and 62.7% to a shortage of dedicated staff and time ^[8]. On spend, 44.7% put carbon data management at between 10 million and 50 million won over the next three years, and 43.3% at 50 million won or more ^[9] - meaning 88.0% expect to spend at least 10 million won ^[12]. For a small supplier, that is a line item with no revenue attached to it.

The institutional answer already exists on paper. KICOX launched an Industrial Complex MRV Platform in June, an integrated system covering measurement, reporting and verification of emissions for rules including CBAM and the EU Digital Product Passport, with the KCCI tasked with expanding demand and supporting companies ^[10]. The two bodies also proposed phased policy support: measuring equipment at the adoption stage, vouchers for the cost of linking the platform to existing internal systems, then subsidies for calculation consulting and the wages of dedicated staff, followed by financing for low-carbon equipment and expansion of RE100 and ESG platforms ^[13].

Cho Young-jun, head of the KCCI's Sustainability Management Institute, said verified carbon data has become urgent because exports now face disruption without it ^[14]. Ha Min-geun of KICOX said the agency plans to strengthen the MRV platform for exporters and keep expanding support for adoption, linking costs and staffing ^[15].

What to watch is uptake rather than launch. A platform announced in June counts for nothing until the 66.3% running parallel in-house systems connect to it, and the barrier they named was integration cost, which is exactly what the voucher stage of the proposed plan is meant to cover ^[4][8][13]. Watch also whether buyers accept platform output as submitted. If they keep issuing their own templates, the 38.8% doing template work will simply add a system to the pile ^[5].