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A Counterfeit-Response Council Links Export Support With Brand Protection
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the National Intellectual Property Office are forming a “Council for the Protection of Intellectual Property in Small and Medium K-Brands” and activating a joint response system. According to an October 2 report by Money Today, the two agencies announced they would hold a kickoff meeting that day. The council also includes the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency and the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency. As Korean products grow more popular abroad, this is a move to connect the system supporting exports with the system protecting trademark, design, and other rights.
According to a JoongAng Ilbo report citing Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency data, the number of counterfeit K-brand products blocked on online marketplaces worldwide rose from 160,000 in 2023 to 210,000 in 2025. That figure covers enforcement across Korean brands broadly, including food and fashion, not just cosmetics, so it shouldn’t be described as a count of counterfeit cosmetics alone, or as the full scale of counterfeit goods in circulation.
Meanwhile, Amorepacific has continued pursuing overseas investment in skin-aging research, partnerships to nurture promising cosmetics companies, and joint product planning with a domestic retail platform. The government’s effort to build a protection system and a leading company’s expansion are unfolding at the same time. The two trends aren’t directly connected as a single initiative, but together they show that as K-beauty moves into broader markets, securing growth opportunities and safeguarding brand trust have become necessary in tandem.
Export Records and Enforcement Figures: Reading Two Different Numbers
According to data released July 2 by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, cosmetics exports in the first half of 2026 came to a provisional $7 billion, up 27.3 percent year over year, the strongest first-half performance on record. That figure confirms that Korean cosmetics’ overseas sales are expanding. But export value is a measure of formal trade volume; it isn’t tallied on the same basis as the number of counterfeits blocked on online platforms.
Placed side by side, the two numbers can explain why both market growth and rights protection matter, but they can’t show how much the rise in exports drove the rise in counterfeits. The periods, scope, and units being measured all differ. Enforcement figures in particular reflect detection, reporting, and the resulting action. Concluding from a rise in blocked counts alone that the actual counterfeit market grew at the same rate would be reading more into the statistics than they support.
Even so, the reason the government is building a response system is clear. If a brand becomes known abroad but the rightful holder can’t protect its trademark and design, the foundation for growth can be shaken. Intellectual property refers to a company’s intangible rights, such as trademarks or designs. This council’s focus isn’t only on adding to export figures. It’s on linking up support so that those rights can be protected as companies expand abroad.
Late September: Research and Retail Partnerships Moved First
Tracing the corporate side chronologically, the first thing that stands out is the September 29 partnership between Amorepacific and Junevity, a biotech company based in San Francisco. According to press releases from both companies, Amorepacific is making a strategic investment in Junevity through its venture arm, Amorepacific Ventures, and partnering on skin-aging research and next-generation cosmetics development. Rather than simply securing a new sales territory, it’s a way of linking outside research capability to future product development.
The significance of this partnership comes into sharper focus once research potential and product results are kept separate. A plan to pursue skin-aging research and carry it into cosmetics development has been announced, but no new product’s efficacy or launch performance has been confirmed. Investment and joint research are a stage of preparing for future competitiveness. Describing this as an already-proven skin-improvement effect would go beyond the scope of what’s been announced, a research partnership, and risk giving consumers a mistaken expectation.
That same September 29, Kurly and Amorepacific also signed a strategic partnership agreement. According to a September 30 report by Byline Network, the two companies plan to jointly develop “Kurly Only” products for Beauty Kurly customers, with Kurly’s merchandisers involved from the early planning stage. If the partnership with the overseas biotech firm expands the research base, the Kurly partnership refines how products are presented to domestic customers and the retail touchpoints around them.
Early October: Investment in Promising Firms and a Government Safety Net, Side by Side
On October 2, Korea Venture Investment Corporation announced it had signed a business agreement with Amorepacific Holdings to nurture K-beauty companies and strengthen an open-innovation ecosystem. Open innovation refers to a company collaborating with outside firms or institutions rather than relying solely on internal capability. According to a Yonhap report, the two sides will pursue the discovery and recommendation of promising companies as well as reviewing joint investments. Korea Venture Investment Corporation is a public investment institution, and the agreement is designed to connect industry expertise with investment support.
The agreement is aimed at supporting the growth of promising Korean cosmetics companies, but it doesn’t mean investment has been finalized for every company recommended. Joint investment remains under review, and the agreement itself should be distinguished from actual execution. The counterparty to this agreement is also Amorepacific Holdings, so it’s more accurate to understand the research partnership with Junevity and the product planning with Kurly as separate expansion paths at the group level, rather than bundling them together as if carried out under a single contract by the same entity.
That same day, the government signaled the kickoff meeting of the K-brand intellectual property protection council, moving to link up its overseas response system. It is pursuing a framework so that companies participating in the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ export support programs can also receive support for protecting intellectual property abroad. The business agreement needed to carry this out is set to be signed between the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency and the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency. It’s an approach aimed at reducing, through inter-agency cooperation, the problem of growth support and rights protection moving along separate tracks.
What Overseas Hubs Are For, and How Corporate Partnerships Serve a Different Purpose
The foundation for the government’s response is its existing network of overseas support hubs. According to a JoongAng Ilbo report, the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency operates 22 Global Business Centers across 14 countries. The council plans to use these export-support hubs together with the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency’s overseas IP support system to share information on infringement cases. What matters more than the name of any new body is whether it can actually connect support, so companies expanding abroad don’t have to seek out export assistance and rights protection separately.
Amorepacific’s partnership with Kurly serves a different purpose. Amorepacific brands including Sulwhasoo, Hera, and Aestura are currently carried on Beauty Kurly, and the two companies are pursuing exclusive product planning and joint marketing. This is a business aimed at expanding customer touchpoints and product competitiveness, not a counterfeit-enforcement agreement. The government’s protection network and the company’s retail partnership can be set side by side for comparison, but there’s no basis for saying the Kurly partnership itself addresses the counterfeit problem.
Overseas companies, too, are drawing on Korean-made cosmetics and the K-beauty wave in their own product planning. On October 5, U.S.-based Mary Kay unveiled a skincare collection called “K-Beauty Texture Edit,” produced in Korea. It’s a supporting example showing that K-beauty’s spread isn’t limited to Korean companies’ overseas sales alone. Still, this kind of formal business partnership should be kept clearly distinct from counterfeit distribution. An overseas brand’s business built on Korean-made products can’t be treated as the same phenomenon as a rights infringement.
The Real Growing Pain Is Sustained Trust, Not the Pace of Expansion
What makes this moment hard to read as simply a list of good news is that growth and protection leave behind different tasks. Research investment broadens the possibilities for product development, nurturing promising companies expands the industry’s foundation, and retail partnerships widen the channels for reaching customers. Counterfeit response, by contrast, is about protecting the brand rights built up through that process. A problem has surfaced that a strategy focused only on expanding sales can’t resolve on its own.
Going forward, what to watch on the government side is whether the council turns information-sharing and linked support programs into real assistance for companies. A plan to sign an agreement and an announcement of a new framework don’t by themselves prove that damage has been reduced. On the corporate side, it’s worth watching whether the Junevity research leads to actual product development, whether the Korea Venture Investment Corporation partnership results in real investment, and what form the Kurly-exclusive products ultimately take. The announcement stage and the results of execution need to be kept separate.
K-beauty’s real growing pain lies less in the fact that it has become more popular than in whether brand value and consumer trust can be sustained as the market widens. Export records show the scale of growth, but they don’t mean that trust is automatically guaranteed. This council and Amorepacific’s various partnerships show a present moment in which protection and expansion are proceeding side by side. The standard for judging what comes next won’t be how many agreements were announced, but what execution and results each of these plans ultimately leaves behind.
Source: Money Today, October 2, 2026. https://www.mt.co.kr/economy/2026/10/02/2026100210442122618 ; JoongAng Ilbo, October 1, 2026. https://www.koreadaily.com/article/20261001192122702 ; Ministry of Food and Drug Safety press release, July 2, 2026, via Hankyung. https://www.hankyung.com/article/202607022037P ; Amorepacific and Junevity press release, September 29, 2026, via Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260929228261/en/Amorepacific-and-Junevity-Partner-to-Develop-Next-Generation-Products-for-Skin-Rejuvenation ; Yonhap, October 2, 2026, via Maeil Business Newspaper. https://stock.mk.co.kr/news/view/1169041 ; Byline Network, September 30, 2026. https://byline.network/2026/09/30_kurly/ ; Mary Kay press release, October 5, 2026, via Business Wire. https://www.afp.com/en/infos/mary-kay-introduces-k-beauty-texture-edit
