Supply

Anyone drafting a business plan around used batteries in Korea runs into a problem that has less to do with a lack of information than with where that information sits. Where can the batteries be sourced, what application can that supply support, which certification track that application requires, what equipment and traceability the track demands, and what registration and insurance a business needs to operate — none of this lives in a single procedure. It is split across several laws under different ministries. This blog has already covered three of those pieces separately: which applications second-life batteries actually fit, what KC 62619 certification covers, and how the KC 10031 safety inspection works. This piece strings those three together in the order a business review actually has to follow, where the answer at each step decides the fork in the next one. ...

Korea’s supply of retired EV batteries is growing fast. According to the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, domestic volume reached 8,321 units in 2025 and is projected to hit 107,500 by 2030. That 2030 figure is still just a projection, though, and past forecasts have missed actual volume by a wide margin — a gap this piece revisits later as a supply-side variable. Ask where all of that can go, and the answer so far converges on one thing: energy storage systems (ESS). Anyone evaluating a second-life battery business wants to know why so few other uses have shown up, and whether that’s likely to change. Rather than listing applications, this piece starts from what actually changes inside a battery once it comes out of a car, and works forward from there. ...