South Korea’s Greenhouse Gas Comprehensive Information Center (GIR), an agency under the, co-hosted a specialised expert forum with the Korean Society on Climate Change at Sejong University in Seoul on 25–26 June. The session was embedded within the society’s annual academic conference — which drew approximately 500 participants across 33 thematic sessions — and centred on how Korea’s national greenhouse gas inventory framework should evolve in response to shifting IPCC accounting standards.
Three subject areas anchored the expert discussions: the integrated management of short-lived climate forcer (SLCF) emissions alongside conventional GHG statistics, covering pollutants such as black carbon and nitrogen oxides; end-to-end monitoring and accounting for carbon removal, capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS); and the refinement of land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUF) carbon-sink calculations. Particular attention was given to enhanced weathering — a process that accelerates alkaline mineral weathering to sequester CO₂ as inorganic carbon in soils or the ocean — and to blue carbon stored in coastal ecosystems such as tidal flats and mangroves. Both are expected to be incorporated into new IPCC accounting guidance slated for publication in 2027, and the forum gathered expert views on appropriate monitoring methodologies ahead of that release. Research agencies and universities including the Korea Meteorological Administration, the National Institute of Environmental Research, the National Fine Dust Information Center, the National Institute of Forest Science, Kangwon University, and Kookmin University participated.
GIR Director Choi Minjicharacterised the forum as a significant opportunity to bridge evolving international standards and domestic policy, and committed to incorporating expert recommendations to strengthen the reliability of Korea’s national GHG statistics. The discussions also addressed strategies for expanding carbon sinks and deepening cooperation with sub-national governments in pursuit of the country’s 2035 national GHG reduction target.
Carbon Market Context
- The IPCC’s planned 2027 accounting guidance, a centrepiece of the GIR forum, will be consequential for how blue carbon removal is quantified and credited internationally.
- Soil carbon projects — 321 registered globally with roughly 15.8 million tCO₂e in total credits — are methodologically adjacent to the enhanced weathering approaches examined at the forum, as both pathways sequester CO₂ into terrestrial systems and face comparable monitoring, reporting, and verification challenges that revised IPCC standards may help resolve.
- At this scale, any material shift in IPCC inventory guidelines has cascading implications for credit methodology design, since voluntary market standards frequently track IPCC accounting norms.
Source
- 국제 기후 통계 체계 전환 대응을 위해 온실가스센터-기후변화학회 머리 맞댄다온실가스종합정보센터 (GIR) — 활동·뉴스, published 25 June 2026