Highlights

• South Korean researchers frame rare earth magnet recycling as an industrial resilience strategy, warning that without collection infrastructure and standardization, Western recycling remains pilot-scale while China retains supply-chain leverage.
• Paper taxonomizes three recycling pathways:
  • Direct reuse (lowest footprint)
  • Short-loop processing (hydrogen decrepitation/HDDR maintaining alloy structure)
  • Long-loop chemical recovery (handling mixed/contaminated streams)
• Authors cite late-2025 Chinese export control expansion on mid/heavy rare earths and high-performance magnets, positioning recycling as a pragmatic hedge against price shocks and supply interruptions for import-dependent manufacturing economies.

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Rare Earth Exchanges™ reviewed South Korean “A Review of Technology Trends in Rare Earth Permanent Magnet Recycling” (opens in a new tab) authored by Dongsoo Kim (opens in a new tab) of the KoreaInstitute of Materials Science (opens in a new tab) and Jungshin Kang of Seoul National University (opens in a new tab). Published in 2025 by the Korean Institute of Resources Recycling, (opens in a new tab) this was a survey rather than an experimental paper, deliberately framed to assess mounting rare-earth supply-chain pressure plus a map the current state of recycling technologies for NdFeB and related permanent magnet streams. The authors note particular relevance for manufacturing economies that remain heavily import-dependent.

Professor Jungshin Kang of Seoul National University

Overview

Rare earths are described as “strategic” because small additions drive performance, substitutes are scarce, and applications span EV motors, wind turbines, semiconductors, smartphones, and precision-guided weapons. It states that permanent magnets are the largest rare-earth application segment, and that Korea relies heavily on imports for neodymium permanent magnets, while domestic recycling research and infrastructure remain underdeveloped.

A Business Signal

The authors treat recycling as industrial resilience, not green virtue. Their core message is that the rare-earth magnet supply chain is a choke point for advanced manufacturing—and that recycling is a pragmatic hedge against export controls, price shocks, and supply interruptions.

They also assert that China’s control spans mining, separation/refining, and final products, and cite a late-2025 tightening of export controls that, in their telling, expanded restrictions to include certain mid/heavy rare earths and high-performance magnets with licensing requirements. That is a significant claim in a Korean academic review—but it should be independently verified before being treated as a settled fact.

The paper’s key contribution: a clean taxonomy of recycling routes

The review organizes circular options into three practical buckets:

1. Reuse / Reuse)
   Meaning: recover intact magnets, demagnetize, clean, recoat, and potentially re-machine them for another use. Lowest energy and chemical footprint, but limited by the collection and compatibility of specifications.
2. Short-loop recycling (Short-loop recycling; also “direct/functional recycling”)
   Meaning: keep the magnetic alloy largely intact and reprocess it into new magnet material. Methods discussed include Hydrogen Decarburization (HD), HDDR, remelting, and melt spinning. Advantage: closer to existing production flows; disadvantage: sensitive to oxidation/contamination and less suitable for shredded, mixed streams.
3. Long-loop recycling (Long-loop recycling; also “elemental/indirect recycling”)
   Meaning: chemically or thermally process magnets to recover rare earth elements/oxides, then re-enter the primary magnet-making chain. Advantage: handles mixed and lower-quality streams; disadvantage: more steps, higher energy/chemical intensity, and more complex economics.

Limiting Factors

Recycling does not scale on chemistry alone. It scales on collection, disassembly, sorting, and standards. Mixed magnet types (ferrite, AlNiCo, SmCo, NdFeB), coatings, oxidation, and varying grades force pre-processing. Different product lifetimes—phones versus wind turbines—also delay usable scrap volumes.

REEx take

This paper reads like a warning shot from a sophisticated manufacturing nation: magnet recycling is supply-chain policy in disguise. The West can subsidize plants, but without feedstock access, disassembly infrastructure, and standardization, recycling remains a pilot project with a press release, while China keeps the leverage.

Source: Kim, D. & Kang, J. (2025). 희토류 영구자석 재활용 기술 동향 연구 / Review on Rare Earth Permanent Magnet Recycling Technology. The Korean Institute of Resources Recycling.