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MOTIE runs the Carbon-Neutral Transition Pioneer Project (탄소중립 전환 선도프로젝트) as a recurring annual concessional-loan program, administered through the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation's carbon-neutral finance center (kicox.or.kr/netzerofin). The March 2025 first round opened applications 6 March–14 April 2025; this is a supplementary second round for the same fiscal-year budget, opened 21 August–19 September 2025, adding KRW 100 billion in fresh lending capacity at a 1.3% rate — well below prevailing Korean commercial lending rates — for large-scale facilities that materially cut greenhouse-gas emissions and for R&D with significant technology/economic spillover. Both SMEs and large enterprises are eligible. The bonus-point criteria (CBAM exposure, approved restructuring plans, Net Zero Challenge X membership) steer the subsidised capital toward trade-exposed heavy industry — steel, chemicals, cement — facing the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism's definitive phase (see eu-cbam-definitive-phase), making this a domestic industrial-policy counterweight to an external carbon-border cost.
heavy-industry exporters, partially offsetting CBAM compliance costs for steel, cement, and chemicals shipments to the EU.
round in the same fiscal year) signals MOTIE intends to scale this instrument further if CBAM or other carbon-border measures tighten.
base — signals direction of policy more than it moves near-term investment totals.
supplementary round (list not yet published as of filing).
the March-then-August pattern.