South Korea Reminds Custom Cosmetic Enterprises of Ingredient Listing Submission

On January 2, 2025, the Korean Cosmetic Association (KCA) issued a reminder¹ for custom cosmetic enterprises to submit the reports for custom cosmetic ingredient listings for 2024 by February 28, 2025. Late submissions will incur a penalty of 500,000 KRW (about 417 USD).

ChemLinked Note

In 2018, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) introduced the category of "custom cosmetics" to cater to consumer demand for personalized products. Custom cosmetics are products created on-site based on individual consumer preferences and skin types. This category includes:

1. Cosmetics that are created by mixing the contents of an existing manufactured or imported cosmetic with those of another cosmetic or raw material.

2. Cosmetics that are repackaged by dividing the contents of a manufactured or imported cosmetic into smaller quantities.

Ingredient Listing Report Procedure

According to the KCA notice, custom cosmetic enterprises should access the KCA website² to submit the ingredient listing reports. KCA will compile the submitted data and report the listings to the MFDS.

Report Preparation

As per the Regulation for Notification of Cosmetics Manufacturing & Import Amount and Lists of Ingredients³, the essential items to be filed in the report include:

custom cosmetic business registration number
ingredient name
product type
product name or category name
responsible manager of the custom cosmetic
custom cosmetic company name
usage purpose (for export or not)

When filling out the “ingredient name” field, enterprises must use standardized Korean names for the ingredients. For mixed ingredients, the names of each individual component should be specified. Enterprises can refer to the KCA's online cosmetic ingredient dictionary3 for the standardized names.

Additionally, products intended for export should be marked with “EXP” in the “usage purpose” column; otherwise, the column should be left blank.

Regarding the “product name or category name,” enterprises have the option to report ingredient listings by each product or by category. This allows companies to group different custom cosmetics with the same ingredients into one category, thereby avoiding repetitive reporting.