Importing food and drinks into Korea: the regulatory route

The foreign businesses that ask us about Korean food imports fall into three groups. Producers — a Spanish olive-oil mill, a Dutch cheese maker, a Californian snack brand — that want an importer, or their own importing company, to carry their products into Korean retail. Traders that want to bring several brands into Korea through one company. And restaurant and retail concepts that need their own supply chain from home. All three meet the same system, built mainly on the Special Act on Imported Food Safety Control in force since February 2016, the Food Sanitation Act and its Food Code, the Food Labelling and Advertising Act and, for alcohol, the liquor tax laws.

This guide covers the route for food and drink sold to Korean businesses and consumers. Our guide to cosmetics and food gives a shorter overview; for dietary supplements and medicines see the border cases below and our guide to pharmaceutical imports.

The importer

Imported food is sold in Korea by a Korean business registered as an imported food importer-seller (수입식품등 수입판매업, suipsikpum-deung suip panmae-eop) with the regional MFDS office under the Special Act. It needs an independent office and hygienic storage — or a contract with a warehouse that has it — and its owner and staff complete food hygiene training, three hours a year, through one of the designated food industry associations. The registration is filed before or together with the general business registration at the tax office, and the importer’s name, address and registration appear on every Korean label.

A foreign producer cannot import into Korea itself. It sells to a Korean importer, or it sets up its own Korean company and registers it. The choice matters less than in pharmaceuticals, because no product licence is held in the importer’s name; it matters more for control of price, labelling and the customer relationship. Agreements with an importer should cover exclusivity, who pays for laboratory tests and relabelling, recall costs, and — for branded products — who registers the trademark in Korea; see trademark registration.

Some activities need their own registrations: online purchase agents (수입식품등 인터넷 구매대행업, inteonet gumae daehaeng-eop) that buy abroad on behalf of Korean consumers, health functional food importers (건강기능식품 수입업, geongang gineung sikpum suib-eop) under a separate Act, and anyone who processes or repacks imported food in Korea, which turns the business into a manufacturer under the Food Sanitation Act.

Registering the foreign plant

Under Article 5 of the Special Act, the importer — or the foreign producer — registers each foreign manufacturing facility (해외제조업소, haeoe jejo-eopso) with MFDS through the Imported Food Information portal at least seven days before the first import declaration. The registration covers the plant’s name, address, products and responsible person; it is valid for two years and must be renewed at least seven days before it expires, and changes must be filed before the next declaration. A shipment from an unregistered plant is refused at declaration. A plant that moves is a new plant and registers again.

MFDS can inspect foreign plants on site, either itself or through the exporting country’s authority, and it grades plants by their records and inspection results. A plant that refuses an inspection, or fails one, loses access to the Korean market until it fixes the problems. Some high-risk categories need a hazard-control system recognised by MFDS. For meat and dairy, plant registration is handled government to government — the exporting country lists approved establishments with Korea — rather than by the importer.

Declaration and inspection

Each shipment is declared to the regional MFDS office under Article 20 of the Special Act before customs clearance. MFDS decides the type of inspection from the product, the plant, the importer’s record and a risk-analysis system that learns from every result:

Source: MFDS, imported food inspection.

The first import is the expensive one: samples are taken, the goods wait in a bonded warehouse and the laboratory checks them against the Food Code (식품의 기준 및 규격, sikpum-ui gijun mit gyugyeok) — additives, contaminants, microbiology, residues. Once a product from a plant has passed, later shipments usually move to field checks or document review, though a product is tested again periodically and immediately after any problem. Importers with a clean record can be designated for lighter treatment; importers with problems are put under an inspection order and must present results from a recognised laboratory with each declaration. When MFDS clears the shipment it issues an import declaration certificate (수입신고확인증, suipsingo hwaginjeung), which customs requires before releasing the goods.

Two Korean standards catch exporters out. Pesticide residues follow the Positive List System (농약 허용물질목록 관리제도, PLS), fully in force since 1 January 2019: a pesticide without a Korean limit for that crop is allowed only at 0.01 mg/kg, which is effectively zero. And Korean additive rules — permitted additives, uses and maximum levels — differ from the EU’s and the US’s in detail, especially for colours, preservatives and sweeteners. Check the formula against the Food Code before the first shipment, not after the laboratory finds it.

Korean labels

Every food sold in Korea carries Korean labelling under the Food Labelling and Advertising Act. For imported food a Korean sticker on the original pack is accepted, provided it is firmly attached and does not hide the original label’s key information. The label shows the product name, type of food, the importer’s name and address, the use-by date (소비기한, sobi gihan) — which replaced the sell-by date for imported foods from 1 January 2023 — net contents, ingredients, nutrition information where required, storage instructions and the country of origin.

Allergens follow Korea’s own list of more than twenty items, which includes some that Western labels do not flag — peach, tomato, pork, beef, chicken, mackerel, squid and pine nuts among them — and genetically modified ingredients must be labelled where GM DNA or protein remains in the final product. Claims are limited: food cannot claim to prevent or treat disease, and functional claims belong to health functional foods. The word organic (유기농, yugi-nong) needs Korean certification under the Act on the Promotion of Environment-Friendly Agriculture, or an equivalence arrangement that covers the product; without it, the claim must come off the Korean label.

Translate the label, then check the recipe. The sticker is the easy part; the 0.01 mg/kg is not.

Voixa Korea

After the shelf: traceability and recalls

The importer’s duties do not end at customs. Imported food is covered by a traceability system phased in from 2016 to 2019, under which importers record what came in, from which plant, and to whom it went, so that a problem can be traced in both directions. When MFDS, a foreign regulator or the producer identifies a hazard — an undeclared allergen, a contaminant, a microbiological finding — the importer must stop sales and recall the product under the Special Act, report the recall and its results, and is published on MFDS’s recall list. Foreign food-safety alerts reach Korea fast: MFDS monitors other regulators’ recalls and can hold declarations of the same product or plant before anything happens in Korea.

Two practical consequences follow. The supply contract should allocate recall costs, and the importer should hold product liability insurance that covers Korea. And the importer needs batch-level records from the producer — production dates, lot codes, certificates of analysis — because the first question after an alert is which Korean shipments contain the affected lots.

Meat, dairy and fresh produce: quarantine first

Animal and plant products face a gate before MFDS: quarantine by the Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency (농림축산검역본부, nongnim chuksan geomyeok bonbu) (APQA). For meat, dairy, eggs and many products containing them, imports are possible only from countries and establishments covered by import health requirements (수입위생조건, suip wisaeng jogeon) negotiated between governments, and every consignment needs the exporting country’s veterinary certificate. A country without an agreed protocol for a product cannot export it to Korea, however good the product. Imported beef is also covered by a traceability system from import to retail.

Fresh fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds are inspected under the Plant Protection Act. Some combinations of product and country are prohibited because of pests — many fresh fruits from many countries among them — and others are allowed only after a pest-risk assessment and agreed treatment such as cold treatment or fumigation. Processed products — dried, cooked, canned, frozen after processing — usually avoid plant quarantine but not MFDS. Check market access for the exact product and country on APQA’s lists before signing a contract.

Wine, beer and spirits

Alcohol has two regulators. MFDS treats it as food: foreign plant registration, declaration, a laboratory test on the first shipment and Korean labelling, with health and drink-driving warnings. The National Tax Service controls the trade: an importer of alcoholic drinks needs a liquor import licence from the tax office under the Liquor Licence Act, and imported drinks are sold on to licensed wholesalers rather than directly to shops and restaurants.

Then come the taxes, all collected at import. Liquor tax is ad valorem for wine and spirits — 30% for fruit wine, 72% for distilled spirits including whisky — and a per-litre tax for beer and makgeolli. Education tax is added at 10% of the liquor tax, or 30% where the liquor tax rate exceeds 70%. The tax base for imports is the customs value plus customs duty. VAT at 10% is charged on the total. Korea’s basic tariffs are 15% on wine, 20% on whisky and 30% on beer, but Korea’s free trade agreements with the EU, the United States, Chile, Australia, the UK and others have removed most of them for qualifying origin.

Illustrative; rounded. Excludes importer, wholesale and retail margins.

The arithmetic explains Korean wine prices, and why proof of origin matters: on a modest bottle the difference between FTA and non-FTA treatment is more than a fifth of the import price. Our guide to customs duties in Korea covers valuation and origin.

Duties and the FTA network

Food tariffs are where Korea protects its farmers, and where its free trade agreements bite hardest. Basic rates run from low single digits for many ingredients to 30%–40% and more for beef, cheese, some fruits and many processed agricultural products, with seasonal tariffs and tariff-rate quotas for sensitive items. Under the FTAs, many of these have been cut or removed for originating goods, often on schedules that run for ten or fifteen years — Korea’s beef tariff for Australia, Canada, the US and the EU, for example, falls to zero over periods ending between 2026 and 2030. Claim the preferential rate with a certificate or statement of origin and keep the evidence: Korean customs verifies origin after release. See our country guides for Australia, Canada, Italy and Spain.

Border cases

• Health functional foods (건강기능식품) — vitamins, supplements, products with functional claims — fall under the Health Functional Foods Act, with their own importer registration and MFDS-recognised functional ingredients. A supplement sold as food abroad may need to drop its claims in Korea.
• Samples and exhibition goods follow lighter procedures for non-commercial quantities, but cannot be sold.
• Personal-use and cross-border online purchases shipped to individual consumers follow lighter rules within limits; a Korean business acting as purchase agent must register, and MFDS publishes lists of products blocked for safety reasons.
• Food ingredients for your own manufacturing in Korea are declared as such and often cleared by document review, but cannot then be resold as they are.
• Infant formula, special medical foods and novel ingredients need specific standards or recognition before the first import.

Setting up your own importing company

For a producer that wants control of its Korean channel, the usual structure is a Korean Jusik Hoesa registered as an imported-food importer, with storage contracted from a temperature-controlled warehouse near Incheon or Busan and sales through distributors, e-commerce platforms and food-service wholesalers. The order: incorporate, lease an office, contract storage, complete hygiene training, register with the regional MFDS office, register the foreign plants, and only then book the first container. For alcohol add the liquor import licence, which the tax office will grant only to a company with the required premises and capital arrangements in place. Our guide to importing through your own Korean company covers the trading set-up, VAT and customs codes.

A worked example

A family producer of aged cheese and cured ham from northern Italy forms a Seoul company to sell to hotels and premium supermarkets. It registers as an imported-food importer, contracts cold storage near Incheon and registers its two plants with MFDS. The ham waits: Korea’s import health requirements for Italian pork products are checked first, and only the approved establishments can ship. The cheese goes ahead.

The first container of cheese is held for a laboratory test, which finds nothing but takes a week; later containers are cleared by field check. Korean stickers carry the use-by date, the importer, and milk as an allergen. The cheese enters at a reduced duty under the EU–Korea FTA with a statement on origin. A year later the company adds Italian wine, which needs the liquor import licence, a first-shipment test of two bottles and Korean warning labels — and, under the FTA, no customs duty on top of the liquor tax.

Mistakes we see

1. Foreign plant not registered seven days ahead — the declaration is refused and the container waits.
2. A recipe legal at home but not in the Food Code — an additive, a colour, a level.
3. Pesticide residues without a Korean limit, failing the 0.01 mg/kg default.
4. Korean label errors: a missing Korean allergen, a sell-by date instead of a use-by date, an organic claim without certification.
5. Meat or dairy contracts signed before checking market access for that country and establishment.
6. Alcohol priced without liquor and education tax, or sold directly to restaurants without a licensed wholesaler.
7. No proof of origin, losing the FTA rate on high-tariff products.

Korean terms you will meet

Questions readers ask

About the author

Alexander Baranov

Founder of the BCA Group · cross-border corporate and tax adviser since 2008

Alexander advises foreign founders and groups on company formation, tax structuring and corporate law in more than 40 jurisdictions across Europe, the Gulf, Asia and Latin America. He is the author of nine books on international business and tax and writes regularly for professional finance and tax journals. He works in English, German, Spanish and Russian.

This guide is based on the Korean statutes cited in the text and on our own filings. It is reviewed when the law or official rates change.

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