This article assesses how South Korea, an emerging donor, is mainstreaming climate change considerations into its official development assistance (ODA) activities. We find that Korea’s climate mainstreaming remains in the incipient stage, with a lack of consistent political commitment at the macro level, misalignment with the recipient’s development plans at the meso level and insufficient institutional capacity at the micro level. In addition to the governance systems that fall short of incentivizing the mainstreaming of climate change, this research identifies a number of characteristics accounting for Korea’s progress with climate mainstreaming that may be unique to emerging donors, like under-reporting of climate ODA and the absence of mainstreaming fatigue.