S. Korea launches pilot program to recover, recycle rare-earth magnets from scrapped EVs

South Korea is launching a pilot program to recover and recycle rare-earth permanent magnets from the drive motors of scrapped vehicles.

The Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy signed a memorandum of understanding Tuesday with the Korea Environment Corporation, Hyundai Motor and the Korea Automobile Dismantling Recycling Association at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Jung-gu, Seoul, to build a domestic circular-use system for rare-earth permanent magnets found in drive motors of end-of-life vehicles.

Drive motors in electric and hybrid vehicles contain roughly 0.75 to 1.5 kilograms of rare-earth permanent magnets, depending on the model. Even when motors removed at scrapyards are recycled, the process typically stops at treating them as scrap metal or recovering limited valuable materials such as copper and aluminum — a fully developed domestic system for separately extracting and recycling the rare-earth permanent magnets themselves has yet to be established.

The pilot program will run on two tracks. The first, a recovery support project, focuses on collecting drive motors from vehicles that arrive at scrapyards. The second, a circular-loop demonstration project, targets test vehicles provided by Hyundai Motor: motors will be dismantled and the full recycling process — including the selective recovery of rare-earth permanent magnets, copper and other valuable materials — will be verified.

The ministry expects the pilot program to recover up to 15 tons of rare-earth permanent magnets each year from more than 14,000 scrapped electric and hybrid vehicles.

Based on the results, the ministry plans to strengthen related regulations — including measures to promote the handover of drive motors at the end-of-life stage and to establish recycling standards that ensure the proper recovery of permanent magnets and other valuable materials at recycling facilities.

"Demand for rare-earth permanent magnets used in drive motors is rising as electric vehicle adoption expands," said First Vice Minister of Climate, Environment and Energy Kim Han-seung. "Through this pilot program, we will develop both a domestic recovery system for drive motors and recycling technologies applicable in the field, strengthening the circular supply chain for rare-earth materials."