On 26 August, South Korea proposed a second safety test for every lithium-battery product under 18 kg, unless the battery itself is rated at 500 Wh or more

What KATS actually proposed

KC 62133-2 is South Korea's mandatory safety standard for portable sealed lithium secondary cells and batteries. Public Notice No. 2026-248 would rewrite its scope language around a new concept, "portable equipment," covering any device weighing 18 kg or less. The draft lists examples: stand fans, robot vacuum cleaners, mood lamps, power banks, smartphones, tablet PCs, notebook computers, power tools, RC cars and personal mobility devices. One exclusion narrows that list back down: equipment whose lithium secondary battery is itself rated at 500 Wh or more falls outside the new "portable equipment" definition, regardless of the device's own weight. For everything that stays inside the definition, KATS is proposing to add KC 62368-1, the safety standard already used for audio, video, information and communication technology equipment, on top of the battery-specific KC 62133-2 requirements that already applied.

A second change runs alongside the scope revision. For lithium-based cells with an energy density of 700 Wh/L or higher and a maximum charging voltage of 4.4 V or higher, the kind used in smartphones, notebook computers and tablet PCs, the self-inspection test required for Safety Certification would switch from an overcurrent charging test to a crush test, harmonizing the self-inspection regime with the requirements KC 62133-2 already sets for full certification. The proposal moved through two parallel tracks: a domestic administrative consultation, whose comment window closed on 16 September 2026, and a WTO Technical Barriers to Trade notification, G/TBT/N/KOR/1378, whose international comment period runs to 26 October 2026.

The numbers behind the proposal

Two numbers decide which products fall inside the new "portable equipment" definition. A third is how long brands still have on the one comment channel that remains open.

The real subject: which standard applies depends on two numbers, not on what the product is called

Read quickly, the proposal sounds like a power-bank rule: trade press coverage so far leads with power banks, because that category sits at the center of the current wave of lithium fire recalls. Read against the draft's own examples, a narrower and more counterintuitive mechanic appears. The "portable equipment" definition does not sort products by category, it sorts them by crossing two independent numbers: the device's own weight, and its battery's energy rating. A robot vacuum cleaner, a mood lamp and a power bank can land in the same compliance bucket purely because each weighs 18 kg or less and carries a battery under 500 Wh, even though none of them shares a product category with the others. A device carrying a larger battery, at or above 500 Wh, escapes the new dual-certification requirement entirely, regardless of how light or portable that device otherwise is. The classification a brand's own product literature uses, power tool, personal care appliance, mobility device, plays no role in the draft's scope test; only the weight of the equipment and the rated capacity of its battery do.

Why it matters for brands

Three groups should read past the power-bank framing. First, any brand selling battery-powered products in Korea needs both figures on file per SKU, equipment weight and battery Wh rating, not a category label, because those two numbers alone decide whether a product needs KC 62368-1 in addition to KC 62133-2. A brand that classifies its own products by function rather than by these two thresholds risks missing devices the draft would newly catch, stand fans, mood lamps and RC cars among them, that were never previously tested against an ICT-equipment safety standard. Second, the crush-test change applies to a narrower technical slice, cells at 700 Wh/L energy density and 4.4 V charging voltage or higher, typically found in smartphones, notebooks and tablets, so brands in that band should expect to requalify existing overcurrent-based test reports even if nothing else about the product changes. Third, the domestic comment window closing on 16 September 2026 is not the end of the process: the WTO notification G/TBT/N/KOR/1378 keeps an international comment channel open until 26 October 2026, and a brand that assumes the story ended with the domestic deadline could miss its last opportunity to flag an edge case, such as a product that sits just under or just over either the 18 kg or the 500 Wh line, before the rule is finalized.

Two ways to read the same proposal

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. ICERTIFI: "South Korea Proposes Updated KC Safety Requirements for Power Banks and Portable Lithium Battery Products," on KATS Public Notice No. 2026-248 (26 August 2026), the 18 kg / 500 Wh "portable equipment" scope revision, the added KC 62368-1 requirement, the crush-test change for high-energy-density cells, the 16 September 2026 domestic deadline and the WTO notification G/TBT/N/KOR/1378 with its 26 October 2026 deadline
2. TÜV Rheinland: "South Korea - Proposal for Technical Regulations for Electrical and Telecommunication Products and Components (KC 62133-2)," independent corroboration of Public Notice No. 2026-248, its publication date, the "portable equipment" scope revision, the device examples listed, the 500 Wh exclusion and the added KC 62368-1 requirement
3. Korea's Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS): official notice register for Public Notice No. 2026-248, the primary source for this proposal, cited here for independent verification
4. World Trade Organization, Technical Barriers to Trade Information Management System: notification G/TBT/N/KOR/1378, the primary international record of Korea's comment period on this proposal

Note on verification: this session's network access allows search but blocks direct page retrieval from kats.go.kr, tbtims.wto.org and most other domains cited above. The Public Notice number, its 26 August 2026 publication date, the "portable equipment" scope revision with its 18 kg and 500 Wh thresholds, the added KC 62368-1 requirement, the crush-test change and its 700 Wh/L and 4.4 V technical thresholds, and both the 16 September 2026 domestic deadline and the 26 October 2026 WTO deadline, were confirmed through search-indexed excerpts of two independent certification and compliance-intelligence sources, ICERTIFI and TÜV Rheinland, whose accounts of the proposal's scope, thresholds and dates agree. The WTO notification identifier G/TBT/N/KOR/1378 appears in one of the two sources consulted; it is reported here as stated, and this article names kats.go.kr and tbtims.wto.org as the underlying primary sources, with their addresses above, for independent verification, since this session could not retrieve their page content directly. Where a figure or claim could not be cross-checked across at least two independent sources, it has been left out of this article.