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[Why Korea 16] Korea Needs More Power and Less Carbon. Can It Have Both?

Nuclear power plant and power lines at dusk with "Korea's Energy Crossroads" text overlay

In the AI era, there's something as important as chips. It's electricity.

On June 29, at an event called the "Korea's Great Leap Forward" briefing held at the presidential office, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix announced a massive investment plan: 800 trillion won ($580 billion) over the next decade, poured into Korea's southwestern Honam region alone.

Honestly, a number that size doesn't really register with me. The very next day, the two companies' top executives headed straight to the site. In a meeting about semiconductors, the first thing they both emphasized wasn't chips. It was electricity.

"A stable power supply matters more than anything else," said Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun.

"We need a site with a large enough footprint and stable power and water supply," said SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung.

Take the Yongin semiconductor cluster: the timeline for completing its national industrial complex's power supply was originally set for 2053. According to reports last July, that's now been moved up to 2042 — 11 years earlier. Building the chip factories isn't the real bottleneck anymore. Getting the electricity there is.

In our previous piece, we saw the paradox at the heart of Korea's climate story — a country building some of the world's most electricity-hungry industries while committing to a carbon target that's nothing to sneeze at. This is exactly where that paradox collides with reality. So where is Korea's energy policy actually headed?

Where Does All That Electricity Come From?

Let's start with what Korea's power grid actually runs on today.

Korea's Power Generation Mix and Import Dependence (2024)

Energy Source Share of Generation Import Dependence
Nuclear 31.7% Low (fuel cost is negligible)
LNG (natural gas) 28.1% Nearly 100%
Coal 28.1% Mostly (95%+)
Renewables & other 12.0% None (domestically produced)

2024 was the first year renewables broke into double digits — but fossil fuels (gas plus coal) still account for more than 56% of Korea's electricity. And remember from our last piece: Korea imports more than 90% of its energy overall. Break it down by fuel, though, and the picture shifts. Korea imports almost all its uranium too, but in 2024 that cost roughly $1.4 billion — a rounding error next to the tens of billions spent on oil. That's part of why renewable energy matters for Korea's energy security, not just its carbon targets: it's the one source the country can actually produce at home.

Why Korea's Energy Choices Are So Hard

So the answer seems simple: build more nuclear, or build more renewables. Except neither is easy.

Take Shin-Hanul reactors 3 and 4 in Uljin, on Korea's east coast. Construction was first proposed in 2015, then scrapped in 2017 under President Moon Jae-in's nuclear phase-out policy. It was revived in 2022 under the next administration, but the completion target is now 2032–2033. From initial proposal to expected completion, that's nearly two decades — and a price tag of 12.3 trillion won ($8.9 billion). Nuclear power is reliable once it's built. Getting it built takes that much time, money, and political consensus.

Renewables have the opposite problem. In the first half of 2024, Korea's installed wind capacity grew — but actual generation didn't. The reason was simple: not enough transmission lines to carry the power. You can build all the turbines you want; if the wires aren't there, it doesn't matter.

So nuclear's problem is "it takes too long to build." Renewables' problem is "even built, there's no way to move the power." The real question isn't nuclear versus renewables. It's what combination Korea actually needs.

Meanwhile, Demand Keeps Climbing

Here's what makes it harder: Korea can't solve this by simply using less electricity.

Semiconductor fab expansions, AI data centers, industrial electrification, EVs — the government's "three mega-projects" (semiconductors, physical AI, AI data centers) all demand enormous amounts of power. That's why the Yongin cluster's power timeline got pushed up by 11 years, and why officials describe electricity as the one truly "irreplaceable" resource for the new Honam cluster.

Put together, Korea now has to satisfy three things at once: power demand keeps rising, carbon emissions have to fall at the same time, and most of the fuel behind all that electricity is still at the mercy of global markets.

That's the central dilemma of this piece.

So Korea Is Redrawing Its Energy Mix

What Korea's government is doing now isn't swapping one energy source for another. It's trying to coordinate several at once.

Alongside the Shin-Hanul restart, new nuclear sites have been confirmed, and renewable expansion is moving forward in parallel. Even the 11th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand (2024–2038), finalized just last year, is already facing a new challenge: keeping up with how fast AI- and semiconductor-driven demand is accelerating.

One more thing worth flagging here: even as renewables grow, the places where power is generated and where it's used don't match, and output swings with the weather. Getting that electricity where it needs to go, and making it usable when it's needed — that's a problem Korea can't avoid.

So, Why Korea?

How should Korea combine nuclear and renewables?

And there's a more fundamental question underneath that: if Korea decides to scale up renewables, how much can it actually build — and how?

Curious about Korea?

So am I.

Key Takeaways

  • In 2024, Korea's power generation mix was 31.7% nuclear, 28.1% LNG, 28.1% coal, and 12.0% renewables — fossil fuels still made up over 56%.
  • Korea imports most of its energy, but renewables are the one source it can produce domestically, which is why they matter for energy security too.
  • Shin-Hanul reactors 3 and 4 took nearly 20 years from proposal to expected completion (2032–2033, at 12.3 trillion won) after being scrapped and revived. Renewables face the opposite problem: capacity keeps growing, but transmission bottlenecks keep actual output flat. Nuclear is "hard to build," renewables are "hard to move."
  • Facing surging demand, falling carbon targets, and heavy import dependence all at once, Korea's government is expanding both nuclear and renewables simultaneously.

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