South Korea’s Climate and Energy Strategy Amid the Hormuz Crisis

ㅣKarl Yang, Founder & Executive Director of KoSIF ㅣ

Climate strategy must move beyond environmental campaigns to become a security strategy for industrial sustainability.

The Hormuz crisis is an opportunity to turn misfortune into a blessing—it is time to demonstrate a concrete energy and climate security strategy.

Every time gunfire echoes around the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East, the pulse of the South Korean economy quickens.

What initially began with the language of dictatorship, nuclear weapons, and retaliation is increasingly revealing its true colors as an energy war. As gas fields, oil refineries, and maritime shipping lanes emerge as core military targets, we are painfully witnessing just how vulnerable the energy structure of the South Korean economy truly is.

      The True Nature of the War is Revealed by Its Targets

The essence of a war is told by its targets. In this conflict, precision strikes did not spare infrastructure; gas fields, export hubs, and refining and power generation infrastructure were all shaken alongside military facilities.

Whenever the threat of a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz escalates, international oil and LNG prices skyrocket. The aftershocks immediately ripple through the import-dependent South Korean economy. Gasoline prices surge, power costs fluctuate, and manufacturing costs rise—simultaneously putting pressure on inflation and the trade balance. Geopolitical shocks in the Middle East directly translate into industrial crises for South Korea.

This war has also exposed an uncomfortable truth about South Korea’s energy policy. While we talk about carbon neutrality in times of peace, our immediate response to a crisis is to fall back on coal and nuclear power. Setting aside preferences for specific power sources, this reveals that our energy procurement system relies far too heavily on overseas fossil fuel shipping lanes.

The issue with the fossil fuel regime is not just carbon emissions. A greater vulnerability lies in the fact that it holds us hostage to geopolitical risks such as wars and maritime blockades.

      Climate Strategy is National Security

We must learn a cold lesson from this war. Climate strategy can no longer remain just an environmental campaign. It must be a security strategy that determines national survival and industrial sustainability.

From this perspective, the era of viewing renewable energy expansion merely as a tool for carbon reduction is passing. Solar and wind power do not pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Energy storage systems (ESS) do not require naval escorts. Distributed power systems do not grind to a halt just because a distant foreign gas field is bombed.

Of course, renewable energy alone cannot solve every problem overnight. However, if the expansion of renewables, the reinforcement of storage systems, investment in the power grid, the electrification of industry, and the advancement of demand management systems are pursued together, it ceases to be a simple eco-friendly policy. Instead, it becomes a security infrastructure that shields the national economy from external shocks.

      Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Reducing External Dependence

We must use the current shock as an opportunity to turn misfortune into a blessing. We cannot settle for stopgap responses to surging oil prices and supply instability. We must fundamentally restructure our energy system to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern straits.

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• - Short-term measures: We need international cooperation to protect freedom of navigation, alongside strategic stockpiling and the diversification of import sources.
• - Mid-to-long-term measures: What is more critical is transitioning to a system where energy is stably produced, stored, and efficiently consumed domestically. Only then can we break free from backward emergency measures—such as reviving our reliance on coal and resorting to price controls—every time a war breaks out.

Relying on new overland routes proposed by certain conflict parties may serve as a supplementary measure, but it is not enough. Whether by sea or land, as long as we entrust our fate to external pathways, we will remain hostages to fortune.

The true solution lies not in changing external routes, but in reducing our dependence on external routes altogether. This means expanding renewable energy, strengthening energy independence, and redesigning industrial competitiveness.

      Energy Transition is a Matter of Sovereignty

A genuine climate response and decarbonization transition cannot be achieved through the superficial management of carbon numbers. It requires the risk-management capability to protect our economic system from external geopolitical shocks, and the sovereign capability to diversify and domesticate our energy pathways. Energy transition is not a question of technology, but of sovereignty; it is not an issue of the environment, but of security.

The homework left for us by the flames in the Middle East is clear. Climate policy is no longer the task of a single ministry. It is a top-priority national strategy that must be tackled jointly by defense, industry, finance, and trade.

Instead of letting the Hormuz crisis pass with fear and temporary fixes, we must use it as a turning point to aggressively push forward South Korea’s energy transition and energy security. It is time to prove through concrete policies that climate strategy is, indeed, security strategy.