Landmark Lawsuit: South Korean Farmers Sue State Power Utility, Blaming Coal Emissions for Climate-Driven Crop Losses

SEOSAN, South Korea (AP) — Standing at the edge of a soggy rice paddy, Hwang Seong-yeol watched a combine harvest through mud and bowed stalks. After nearly 30 years of farming, he described this season as one of his hardest: a bitter spring that stunted plants, an exceptionally rainy September and October, summer floods and a wet autumn that encouraged fungal disease.

The lawsuit

Hwang is one of five South Korean farmers who have filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the state utility Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) and its power-generating subsidiaries. The plaintiffs argue that the companies’ heavy reliance on coal and other fossil fuels has contributed to climate change, producing destabilized weather that damaged their crops and reduced yields.

Farmers’ experiences on the ground

Hwang’s reclaimed coastal plain on the country’s west coast is threaded with waterways and migratory birds, but this year the weather upended expectations. He now expects his harvest to be 20–25% below normal after 18 consecutive days of rain ended only two days before a late-October harvest. “We know how much rice we should normally get from 30,000 pyeong (about 25 acres) of land, but the yield has been steadily declining every year,” Hwang said. “Why is it always the farmers — who haven’t done anything wrong — that end up suffering the consequences of the climate crisis?”

Legal claims and evidence

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, including Yeny Kim of the Seoul nonprofit Solutions for Our Climate, say KEPCO should bear a share of responsibility because the utility group produced a substantial portion of national emissions and has been slow to transition to renewables. Based on publicly available data covering 2011–2022, the lawyers estimate the KEPCO group accounted for roughly 30% of South Korea’s greenhouse gas emissions and about 0.4% of global emissions in that period. Kim says that, by this logic, KEPCO should shoulder about 0.4% of liability for farmers’ losses.

The suit seeks initial damages of 5 million won (about $3,400) per plaintiff — an amount likely to change during litigation — and a symbolic payment of 2,035 won (about $1.40) per person to press the government to retire coal plants by 2035 instead of the current 2040 target.

KEPCO response and constraints

KEPCO told reporters it treats carbon reduction as a core responsibility and has set a target to cut emissions by 40% by 2030 compared with 2018 levels. The company declined to offer further comment on the lawsuit, saying it could not provide information that might influence a court decision.

Analysts note the utility faces structural limits: a debt burden exceeding 200 trillion won (about $137 billion) accumulated under past policies that kept electricity prices low. That fiscal pressure constrains KEPCO’s capacity to modernize the grid or invest quickly in renewable energy.

Expert reactions and policy implications

“It would be difficult to prove the utility directly caused farm losses, when climate change is a global problem,”

said Yun Sun-Jin, a professor at Seoul National University. She called the case symbolically important for highlighting the need to accelerate renewable deployment, including deregulating solar investment, expanding offshore wind and ending KEPCO’s exclusive control of transmission to open the market to competitors and new technology.

Government data show renewable energy accounted for only 10.5% of South Korea’s energy mix in 2024, while the five KEPCO subsidiaries relied on coal for more than 71% of the electricity they generated that year. Forecasts suggest South Korea may reach a roughly 32.95% renewable share by about 2038 — slower than the 33.49% average among developed OECD economies in 2023 — raising concerns the sluggish transition could hamper ambitions in sectors such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

Wider agricultural impacts

The effects of extreme weather extend beyond rice. Apple grower Ma Yong-un in Hamyang says prolonged heat and humidity have increased pests and fungal disease; he now uses more pesticides and applied copper sulfate and lime across 2,200 trees to protect fruit from sun damage and infection. Ma, who began farming in 2011, said a heavy April snow in 2018 that damaged flower buds made him take climate risk seriously. “Farming is becoming harder each year and I constantly wonder how much longer I can carry on,” he said.

From tangerine orchards on Jeju to strawberry fields in Sancheong, growers are adapting with higher labor and input costs while often receiving lower or more unpredictable yields. A government climate report in April said 2024 was South Korea’s hottest year on record and described a chain of extreme events — heavy rains that destroyed thousands of hectares of cropland followed by weeks of intense heat — that together triggered agricultural disasters, particularly for rice.

What’s at stake

The lawsuit puts a spotlight on who should bear the costs of climate-driven losses and how fast South Korea can decarbonize an electricity system long dominated by coal. While the legal path to holding a single company liable for climate impacts is uncertain, the case is already shaping public debate over energy policy, corporate responsibility and the protection of farmers facing increasingly volatile weather.