Key Court Decisions of 2025 – Environmental Law
2026.10.08.
Each year, Yulchon selects and analyzes the key environmental law decisions handed down over the preceding year.
This Legal Update examines the principal issues and implications of the major environmental law judgments and decisions rendered in 2025. In judgments and decisions handed down in 2025, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court clearly articulated the following legal principles: (1) causing soil contamination through acts such as the leakage, discharge, dumping, or abandonment of “contaminated soil” itself may also constitute “an act that has caused soil contamination through the leakage, discharge, dumping, abandonment, or other acts involving soil pollutants” under Article 10-4(1)(1) of the Soil Environment Conservation Act; (2) recycling waste by using it as fill or similar material in contact with soil at a construction site (the “R-7-1 type”) may constitute a violation of Article 13-2 of the former Wastes Control Act where the “recycling standards” are met but the “recycling compliance requirements” are not, because the levels of soil pollutants in the waste or the filled area itself exceed the soil contamination warning standards; and (3) facilities that reuse wastewater without discharging it into public waters may also constitute “wastewater discharge facilities” under the former Water Environment Conservation Act.
For more details, please refer to the full report attached below.
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