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On January 14, 2025, Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) published new import health requirements (IHRs) for pet food, which are effective immediately. With the new IHRs, there is now a pathway to approve U.S. pet food products containing ruminant ingredients, which had been banned since 2003.

Chocolate is a popular product in the Korean market, with 2023 sales reaching $578 million and imports of chocolate totaling $356 million.

Korean imports of cheese products continue to grow, seeing a five percent compound annual growth rate over the last five years. Mozzarella is the most imported cheese product and the United States is the leading supplier of cheese to Korea.

Korea’s beer imports reached $218 million in 2023, up 11.8 percent from $195 million in 2022, but still 30 percent down from the record high of $310 million in 2018. Although Korea’s beer imports have been decreasing since the pandemic, the United States increased exports of beer to Korea in 2023, reaching $17.9 million, up 43% from $12.5 million in 2022.

Korea’s wine import sector has been undergoing a stabilizing phase since the explosive growth around 2021. In 2023, wine imports reached 506 million USD, down 12.9 percent from the previous year, totaling 56.5 million kg, a decrease of 20.4 percent compared to 2022.

Korea was the 5th largest country importer of the U.S. agricultural and related products in 2023. The United States is the leading supplier of imported consumer-oriented agricultural products for Korean retail industry, shipping $4.9 billion in 2023.

Korea’s pet food market has been growing strongly. But, while imported products have traditionally dominated the market, imports declined in 2023 for the first time in over a decade.

On July 1, 2024, the United States and Republic of Korea agreed to the labeling requirements outlined in this report regarding storage state for U.S. red meat and poultry products and U.S. processed red meat, poultry, egg, and dairy products.

The 2023 U.S. Agricultural Export Yearbook provides a statistical summary of U.S. agricultural commodity exports to the world during the 2023 calendar year.

Korea's food processing industry relies heavily on imports to fulfill its food and agricultural needs in order to manufacture a wide variety of food and beverage products.

Ample opportunities exist for U.S. agricultural exports to South Korea. Highlighted in the chart above, U.S. agricultural product exports were a record $9.5 billion in 2022, up 2 percent from 2021. South Korea is the sixth largest export market for the United States, thanks in part to a successful free trade agreement (KORUS) between the two countries and a robust demand for high-quality U.S. food products.

Domestic production is projected to drop to 1.93 million tons in 2023 after reaching 1.98 million tons in 2021. Milk production is expected to show a downward trend due to the decreasing number of dairy farms, decreasing number of milk cows, and...