K-GF supports ESG management
for carbon neutrality by 2050.

Companies around the world are paying keen attention to ESG management and responding actively the climate change crisis. ESG is a core management indicator that stands for environment, social responsibility and corporate governance, and has become a major factor in determining the success or failure of not only companies but also the capital market and the nation. In particular, governments around the world are aiming to achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050 through bringing greenhouse gas emissions as close to zero as possible, with any remaining emissions re-absorbed from the atmosphere, beyond the scope of simple compliance with environmental standards.

K-GF proposes green solutions based on ESG with a view to building a net zero society by 2050.

ESG Education for C-level Opinion Leaders

The world is now swept by a strong wind of ESG management emphasizing that sustainable development can be achieved by transparent management encompassing aspects such as eco-friend­liness, socially responsible management, and governance improve­ment in corporate activities taken to address climate change and viruses. In the midst of this, in March 2021, the K-GF opened the ESG Leadership Course, the first ESG course for top executives in South Korea to advance Environmental (E), Social (S), and Governance (G) values and build an ecosystem that facilitates sustainable management.

The 'ESG Leadership Course,' co-hosted by Maeil Business Newspa­per, is a 10-week training course guided by the best domestic and foreign instructors. It looks at ESG evaluation standards and the latest overseas trends for accomplishing a Carbon-Neutral era by 2050. This is a training course that presents an ESG model that can be applied immediately to work-site operations. About 60 people, including top executives from companies, opinion leaders from the government, local governments, the National Assembly, politics, academia, and the legal community, took the course. ESG management cases and the latest trends were introduced and discussion workshops were held.

Awarding Korea’s representative
sustainable management companies

In January 2020, BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, declared its intent to actively reflect ESG management with the statement, “Companies that generate more than 25 percent of their profits from fossil fuels will be excluded from our investment portfolio.”

In addition, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate and environmental concerns have emerged as the biggest social issues affecting corporate management. Accordingly, the importance of ESG management activities, which refer to management activities for the environment, social responsibility and corporate governance, is on the rise.

The ESG Awards are given to companies that maintain the highest level of ESG management in a rapidly changing business environment, fulfill their responsibilities and roles as sustainable management companies, and serve as a role model for other companies.

K-GF scores the ESG performance and risk management status of domestic businesses and gives the ESG Awards to the companies with the highest scores in each industry. K-GF evaluates the top 1,000 companies (companies listed on the Korea Exchange, public corporations) in the market capitalization throughout the year, and selects companies showing excellent ESG performance within each industry through a comprehensive evaluation score that integrates ESG performance based on public data and ESG risk results based on artificial intelligence analysis of news data, and screening by experts from various fields.