Korea’s beauty industry closed out 2025 with a record most in the sector had been chasing for years: the country’s cosmetics exports hit 11.431 billion dollars for the year, up 12.3 percent from 2024’s 10.178 billion dollars, according to preliminary trade figures released by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on January 1. That performance was enough to lift Korea from third place to second place globally in cosmetics exports in a single year, trailing only France’s 24.28 billion dollars and edging out the United States, which came in third at 10.75 billion dollars.
What makes the milestone especially notable is how it was achieved. Korea crossed the monthly billion-dollar export threshold three separate times in 2025, in April, September, and December, a first in the country’s cosmetics trade history. By contrast, 2024, the first year Korea’s cosmetics exports topped 10 billion dollars annually, saw that monthly billion-dollar mark hit only once. December alone brought in 1.07 billion dollars, a 22.3 percent jump over the same month the previous year, capping the year on an unusually strong note.
The road wasn’t entirely smooth. Exports to the United States, which had been offsetting a slowdown in Chinese demand and driving much of the overall growth, ran into turbulence in the third quarter as the Trump administration’s tariff policies took effect. Even so, US-bound exports continued growing rather than contracting, and continued strength in the Middle East and Southeast Asia helped keep the overall trajectory upward through a brief October dip before rebounding in November and December.
Basic skincare products, things like serums, moisturizers, and toners, made up the bulk of the growth, accounting for 8.53 billion dollars, or nearly 75 percent of total cosmetics exports, while color cosmetics contributed 1.505 billion dollars, or roughly 13 percent. By destination, the United States led at 2.184 billion dollars, or 19.1 percent of total exports, narrowly ahead of China at 2.018 billion dollars, with Japan a distant third at 1.087 billion dollars.
Perhaps the most telling detail in the data: small and independent Korean beauty brands, rather than the country’s beauty conglomerates, accounted for more than 90 percent of total export value, a sign that Korea’s cosmetics boom abroad is being driven less by a handful of household names and more by a dense ecosystem of smaller players finding footholds in markets around the world.
Source: Heo Kang-woo, Cosmorning, January 2, 2026, citing Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy export data.
