Seoul secures lithium loans and launches magnet recycling pilots

Following a presidential visit to South America, South Korea has locked in overseas financing while launching domestic pilot projects to extract rare earth magnets from discarded appliances.

IDB Invest agreed to support POSCO Holdings' lithium mining and production business in Argentina with a loan. Ministry of Economy and Finance officials described the deal as an outcome of recent diplomatic efforts.

Domestically, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment signed an agreement on Aug. 27 with LG Electronics and the Korea Electrical and Electronic Products Recycling Governance to recover permanent magnets from waste air conditioners and refrigerators. The pilot project aims to separate rotors containing rare earth permanent magnets, a task previously difficult due to strong magnetic forces that forced workers to treat them as scrap metal.

Partners expect to recover about 1,600 kilograms of rare earth permanent magnets annually from roughly 40,000 units. LG Electronics will use specialized equipment developed under regulatory special exceptions to demagnetize and separate the materials for use as raw materials in developing new magnet manufacturing technologies.

Parallel efforts are expanding in Southeast Asia, where the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy agreed with Vietnam to proceed with a Critical Mineral Supply Chain Technology Center. The two nations also signed a memorandum of understanding for the Korea National Oil Corporation to provide technical consulting on building Vietnam's first underground oil storage facility.

The government plans to refine recycling standards based on the outcomes of the appliance recovery tests.