Korea's K-GX plan: 1,000 trillion won for hydrogen steel, SMRs, clean hydrogen, and carbon-free steel by 2050

South Korea has laid out a 1,000 trillion won green transformation strategy, called K-GX, with a headline goal of carbon-free steel by 2050. The plan targets hydrogen-based steelmaking at 300,000 tons of demonstration capacity by 2030 and 2.5 million tons by 2035, plus 3.5 million tons from advanced electric arc furnaces by 2035. It also includes clean hydrogen scale-up, SMR development, tandem solar commercialization, and support for batteries and heat pumps. The strategy puts public money behind sectors that are hard to decarbonize: steel, oil refining, petrochemicals, and cement. It also names emerging industries like solid-state batteries, 20 MW wind turbines, and small modular reactors. One notable omission is electric vehicles, which were left out of the production tax credit program despite a goal to reach 8 percent global EV market share by 2035. Readers should treat the 1,000 trillion won figure as a policy direction rather than a committed budget. The hydrogen production target, from about 1 million tons today to 150 million tons by 2035, looks unrealistic and may be a reporting error. Even so, the sector-level deadlines give a useful baseline for tracking Korea's decarbonization progress.