Expensive to get wrongSouth Korea

Korea’s pack names every ingredient and the status

The Cosmetics Act requires the outer package of a cosmetic to state the product name, the trade name and address of the business operator, all ingredients used in manufacturing it, the volume or weight, the batch number, the use-by date or period after opening, the price, cautions for use, and for a functional cosmetic the words “functional cosmetic” or the Ministry’s logo.

The regulatory status has to appear on the front of the pack rather than in a file, so a product’s classification becomes a visible design constraint and one that a shopper, a competitor and a regulator can all check from a photograph.

93 of a possible 97Tier A, primary document or measured outcome. Nothing at this tier is allowed past 97, however good it looks.

Verified August 6, 2026Rechecked every 365 days, next by August 6, 2027.

Constraint

Held since February 1, 2012A rule, law or policy that limits what you may do or say. The earliest date we are willing to say this held. It may well have been true before that; we do not backdate a record past the evidence we have read. Supported, version 1.

This entry is wrong if

Article 10(1) is amended to drop the full-ingredient requirement, or to remove the obligation to mark a functional cosmetic as such on the package.

Written before the record was published, not after. If you can show this, send it to hello@tryorbt.com and the correction goes on the record with the entry.

Evidence

Tier Aregulation
Korea Ministry of Government Legislation (National Law Information Center): Cosmetics Act (Act No. 20901), English translation
1. Name of the cosmetic; 2. Trade name and address of the business operator; 3. All ingredients used in manufacturing the relevant cosmetic (excluding ingredients prescribed by Prime Ministerial Decree, such as trace ingredients that are not harmful to the human body); 4. Volume or weight of contents; 5. Batch number; 6. Use-by date or the period after opening; 7. Price; 8. For a functional cosmetic, the word “functional cosmetic” or the logo determined by the Minister of Food and Drug Safety indicating that the product is a functional cosmetic; 9. Cautions for use; 10. Other matters prescribed by Prime Ministerial Decree.
Article 10(1). The exclusions in item 3 and the small-package relief in the proviso are both delegated to Prime Ministerial Decree, whose English translation the register flags as historical, so this claim does not state what they contain.
Read 2026-08-06 · Open government · page hash 92590839801f

History

v1createdAugust 5, 2026
Initial entry from the Korean government's own English translation of the Cosmetics Act, read 2026-08-06 through the National Law Information Center Open API (target=elaw), which flags this text 현행, currently in force. Articles were taken from the publisher's own markup rather than split out of flattened text.

Append-only. Nothing in this list is edited or removed once written, including the entries that record our own mistakes. Every change to every record is on the corrections page, and the same log is in entries.json under revisions.

kr
korea
labelling
ingredients
packaging
compliance

Cite this entry

“Korea’s pack names every ingredient and the status”, The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0, entry omr:kr:the-label-must-name-every-ingredient, retrieved September 9, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/kr--the-label-must-name-every-ingredient. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22679129

Orbt, "Korea’s pack names every ingredient and the status," Orbt Market Index, entry omr:kr:the-label-must-name-every-ingredient, verified August 6, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/kr--the-label-must-name-every-ingredient.

@misc{orbt-kr-the-label-must-name-every-ingredient,
  title        = {Korea’s pack names every ingredient and the status},
  author       = {{Orbt}},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.22679129},
  note         = {The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0 (dataset DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22679129), entry omr:kr:the-label-must-name-every-ingredient. Verified 2026-08-06},
  howpublished = {\url{https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/kr--the-label-must-name-every-ingredient}},
  license      = {Orbt Index Public Licence. Free to quote and cite; not to redistribute}
}

For a deck, a brief or a chat.

Free to quote, cite and act on. Not to resell or redistribute — the sources ask that of us, and each one’s terms are named. Machine-readable: entries.json carries this record under the id omr:kr:the-label-must-name-every-ingredient, with the same evidence and falsifier.

Published free, as reference, without warranty. This is not legal, regulatory, customs, tax or investment advice, and it is not a substitute for reading the primary document, which every record here names, dates and links, precisely so that you can.

We derive from public sources and we do not independently audit them. Where a source says its own records are unverified, that carries through to us. What we do promise is that every figure is recomputed from stored rows, every claim publishes the observation that would overturn it, and every correction goes on the public log. If something here is wrong, tell us and it changes in the open.

Orbt is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for Korea Ministry of Government Legislation (National Law Information Center). They are cited as sources. Go and read them directly — they are more complete than we are, and they are linked from every record that rests on them.

This entry is wrong if

Evidence

History

Cite this entry

Read next