Limited research has previously probed the interplay between Korea’s food security, agricultural sector, and environmental ramifications. This study delves into the asymmetric influence of food security and agricultural value-added on Korea’s carbon dioxide emissions (an environmental sustainability proxy) from 1970 to 2020, incorporating non-renewable energy consumption and foreign direct investment. Employing a nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag methodology, our findings unveil long-term asymmetric effects of food security and agricultural value-added on carbon dioxide emissions. Specifically, carbon dioxide emissions rise with positive shocks to food security and agricultural value-added but decline with negative shocks. Moreover, our analysis reveals that non-renewable energy consumption positively impacts carbon dioxide emissions, whereas foreign direct investment exerts a negative effect. These insights may underpin policy recommendations for the Korean government to bolster environmental sustainability.