Category: Before You Go

Nothing in a Korean Daiso costs more than ₩5,000. That is the whole proposition, and it is why the aisles in Myeongdong are full of visitors holding baskets instead of single items. It also creates a problem no English-language guide seems to mention: Korea’s tax refund for foreign visitors is paid from a bracket table, not as a percentage — and a basket assembled from ₩1,000 items lands in the worst bracket more often than any other kind of shopping.

The gap is not small. Two receipts that differ by one won can differ by ₩1,000 in what you get back.

The price cap is company policy, not folklore

Daiso states it on its own corporate site, under its customer commitments: six fixed price points — ₩500, ₩1,000, ₩1,500, ₩2,000, ₩3,000 and ₩5,000. Korean press reporting adds that the structure has not changed since the company was founded 34 years ago, and that most items sit in the ₩1,000–₩3,000 range.

The foreign-shopper trend behind the crowds comes from figures the company released itself. Daiso’s overseas card payments rose 130% in 2023, 50% in 2024, 60% in 2025, and roughly 100% in the first half of 2026 against the same period a year earlier. In the first quarter of 2026 the increase was about 70% year on year. The company has published percentages only — we could not find the underlying won figure anywhere.

The beauty aisle is most of the reason. Daiso carried 7 cosmetics brands and about 120 products at the end of 2022. By the end of 2025 that was roughly 150 brands and 1,420 products, and by May 2026 about 170 brands and 1,900 products. The chain operates somewhere above 1,600 stores nationwide, having passed 1,600 in mid-2025.

The refund rule that decides everything

Korea’s VAT refund for foreign visitors starts at a minimum of ₩15,000 per single payment. The Korea Tourism Organization, the Seoul Tourism Organization and Incheon Airport all state the same figure. It was ₩30,000 until the government halved it, announced in 2023 and effective from 2024. English guides still circulating ₩30,000 — and there are many — are out of date.

For immediate in-store refunds, a single purchase must be under ₩1,000,000, and one traveller is capped at ₩5,000,000 across the whole trip. Those ceilings doubled on 1 January 2024, up from ₩500,000 and ₩2,500,000. When the scheme launched in 2016 the limits were ₩200,000 and ₩1,000,000.

At Daiso prices, the ₩15,000 minimum is the only limit that will ever matter. At the ₩5,000 ceiling that is three items in one payment. At the more typical ₩1,000–₩3,000 range it is five to fifteen.

Where the one-won cliff is

Refunds are paid from a bracket table. Inside a bracket the amount is fixed no matter how much more you spend, so the worst place to stop is one won below a line. The figures below are from Global Tax Free’s published schedule.

Read the bold rows again. One more won moves you into the next bracket and doubles the refund. The same cliff sits at ₩75,000, where one won is worth ₩2,000. Above ₩6,000,000 the table stops using fixed amounts and pays 90% of the VAT.

This matters more at Daiso than at a cosmetics counter, because a basket built from ₩1,000 and ₩2,000 items stops at arbitrary totals. A cart that happens to end at ₩28,400 gave up ₩1,000 for nothing. One more ₩2,000 item would have returned it twice over.

The table is not the same everywhere

Refund operators publish their own schedules, and they differ. On a ₩100,000 purchase, Global Tax Free’s table pays ₩7,000. Korean reporting on Global Blue’s terms describes ₩6,000 for the same amount. Which operator the shop uses is not something you choose, and it is rarely posted at the register.

Published pages also contradict each other within a single operator. We found Global Tax Free’s Korean-language and English-language pages stating different figures for the downtown-refund range — the Korean page gives ₩30,000 to ₩5,000,000 while the English page and the tourism board both give a ₩6,000,000 ceiling.

“10% back” is not a thing

Korean VAT is 10%, and the number gets repeated as if it were the refund. It is not. Measured against the VAT actually contained in your payment, the schedule above returns between 36.7% and 77% of it in the ranges a Daiso shopper will hit. Measured against what you paid, it is between 3.33% and 7.5%.

Whether Daiso does refunds at all

Some branches do, and the company does publish this — just not where anyone looks. Daiso’s store locator carries a service filter named tax refund, described in its own wording as “issues a tax refund receipt (foreign nationals only)”. Individual store pages then show the tag.

Two things follow from that wording. First, participation is per branch, not chain-wide. Second, what the filter describes is the paperwork, not cash at the till — which points to the airport-refund route rather than an immediate in-store refund. We could not confirm from any official source which branches, if any, refund on the spot.

Separately, the Korea Tourism Organization lists eight Daiso branches as Tax Refund Shops on its official English site: the Myeongdong main store and Myeongdong Station branch, Hongdae No. 2, Sinchon main and Sinchon Myeongmul Street, Jeju Yeondong, Busan Nampo and Busan Seomyeon No. 2. That list is plainly incomplete — it does not include the large Gangnam store that opened in July 2026 — and there is no published register anywhere of which of the 1,600-plus branches participate.

The same pattern appears at Olive Young, where the tourism board lists individual branches while the company publishes no policy page. We looked at Olive Young’s foreign-customer figures separately in an earlier note.

The airport step that costs people the refund

Incheon Airport’s own guidance is explicit: at the time of purchase you must show your passport and ask for the refund documents. A normal receipt is not enough. Without the paperwork there is nothing to process later.

Then the split, and the order matters:

• Carry-on. Check in, then use the kiosk in the departures area. If the kiosk flags your purchase, present passport, sales confirmation and the goods — unopened — at the customs desk.
• Checked baggage. Tell the airline at check-in that the bag contains refund goods, get customs confirmation, receive the tag, and send the bag through the oversized-baggage belt. Check it in normally and the confirmation cannot happen.

Here is the trap specific to this kind of shopping. A 200ml toner cannot go in your carry-on: international departures limit liquids to 100ml per container inside one transparent one-litre bag. The sealed-bag exemption does not rescue you, because under the governing rule it covers goods bought at airport shops, at duty-free shops and collected at the airport pickup counter, or on board — not goods bought at an ordinary shop that happens to issue refund paperwork. Daiso and Olive Young are the latter. So anything over 100ml must be checked, and the customs step therefore has to happen before check-in.

Two practical notes. The staffed cash counters run 07:00–22:00 at Terminal 1 and 07:00–21:30 at Terminal 2 according to the airport operator, so an early-morning departure will find them shut; the 24-hour automated kiosks are the fallback. And there is no published won threshold that triggers customs inspection — the airport’s wording is simply that it happens when the kiosk designates it. Pack so you could open the bag if asked.

Who qualifies

• Foreign nationals who have been in Korea less than six months. Diplomats, US Forces Korea personnel and people employed in Korea are excluded.
• Overseas Koreans who have lived abroad two years or more and have been in Korea three months or less.
• Goods must be unopened and unused if customs asks to see them.
• You must leave Korea within three months of the purchase date.
• If you took a downtown refund, customs export confirmation must be completed within 25 days; a hold of 110% of the refund sits on your card until it is.

Common questions

Can I combine several Daiso receipts to reach ₩15,000?
No. The threshold applies to a single payment. Three separate ₩9,000 payments are three amounts below the minimum.

Does every Daiso branch offer tax refunds?
No. Daiso’s own store locator has a tax refund filter, so it is per branch, and there is no published list of which ones. The tourism board separately names eight.

How much do I actually get back?
Between 3.33% and 7.5% of what you paid, set by bracket. It is never the full 10% VAT, and the exact table depends on which refund operator the shop uses.

What is the single biggest mistake?
Stopping just under a bracket line. ₩29,999 returns ₩1,000; ₩30,000 returns ₩2,000.

Can I open the packaging before I fly?
No. Goods must be unopened and unused if customs asks to inspect them.

What this article does not claim

We could not reach the text of the special taxation decree that governs this scheme, so no article numbers are cited anywhere above and the exact commencement date of the ₩15,000 minimum is not stated. We could not load the published schedules of refund operators other than Global Tax Free, and we do not know whether those schedules are set by statute or by the operators themselves; the Global Blue figure quoted here comes from Korean press reporting, not from the company’s own page. We could not confirm whether the 25-day downtown-refund deadline is statutory or contractual. We do not know which Daiso branches refund on the spot as opposed to issuing paperwork. We did not find any official statement that goods from tax refund shops are excluded from the sealed-bag liquids exemption — that conclusion follows from the rule’s own description of which shops it covers. The airport operator and the tourism board publish different opening times and gate numbers for the Terminal 2 counter; we have used the airport operator’s.

Related: Korea exempts medical care from VAT — then names the procedures that lose the exemption.

Related: Duty-free saves 10% on Korean cosmetics — Olive Young discounts more.

Related: Korea refunds the VAT on your hotel room — almost nobody claims it.

The same bracket logic applies to everything else you buy, and there is a second question nobody asks until the airport: whether the thing survives your own country’s border. We checked nine of them.

Note №32PRICE INTELLIGENCE

Korean clinics price energy-device treatments in shots, lines, cc, Units and cartridges — not in treatments. We read the manufacturers’ own manuals on 19 August 2026. A Thermage treatment tip is specified for single-patient use. An Ultherapy transducer is specified to be wiped and used between patients. Neither manual tells you how many shots a consumable holds.

You ask what a lifting treatment costs in Seoul. English guides answer with a range: one to two million won. Then the actual quote arrives, and it does not look like that at all. It says 300 shots. Or 600. Or 900. Sometimes it says 100 shots and a price that seems impossibly low.

That number is not a discount tier and it is not a package size. It is a quantity of consumable — a metered part that the machine burns through and that the clinic has to buy again. Once you know that, the range in the guides stops being a price and becomes what it always was: a number with the unit removed.

Why is a Korean price quoted in shots rather than treatments?

Because these machines meter themselves, and the manufacturers built the counting into the device.

The Ulthera System — sold in Korea as 울쎄라 — displays, on its own screen during treatment, the “Number of treatment lines remaining/total treatment line capacity of transducer.” When that counter hits zero the system raises an error and the manual instructs: “The Transducer’s remaining line count is zero. Remove and replace the Transducer.”

So the quantity is real, it is enforced by the hardware, and the clinic is passing it to you. The unit is not marketing. It is the machine.

Note the vocabulary problem already: the manufacturer’s own word is lines, and the Korean price board says 샷 (shots). Those are the same quantity under two names, and neither appears in the English guides that quote you a range.

What is the consumable, and may it be used on more than one person?

Here the two best-known machines part company completely, and they do it in their own documentation.

Thermage (써마지). The Thermage CPT System technical user’s manual — model TG-2B, document P009240-06, September 2021 — says this in three separate places:

“The Non-Sterile Treatment Tips are designed for single patient use only.” (§6.7)

“The Treatment Tip is for single-patient-use only. Do not reuse Treatment Tips.” (§10.1.4)

“Treatment Tips are for single patient use only. Do not reuse. Multiple patient use creates a risk of cross contamination of microorganisms from one patient to another.” (§4.2.53)

Ultherapy (울쎄라). The Ulthera System Instructions for Use — document 1015107IFU Rev 05, April 2024 — says this:

“Because the transducer will come in contact with the skin of a patient, the standard practice for cleaning and low-level disinfection of transducers between patients is to gently but thoroughly wipe the transducers with a standard 70% isopropyl alcohol prep pad for a minimum of one minute.” (§9.1)

Two manufacturers, two consumables, two opposite instructions. One says the part goes in the bin after you. The other describes the procedure for cleaning it before the next person.

This is a difference in device design, not a ranking of clinics. It is also the reason a request that sounds reasonable for one machine is meaningless for the other: you can ask to watch a Thermage tip come out of its packaging. There is no equivalent moment for an Ultherapy transducer, because the manufacturer never intended there to be one.

⚠️ One precision we owe you: the Thermage manual we read covers the CPT system, model TG-2B. We did not obtain the manual for the newer FLX system, and we are not asserting that its wording is identical.

Is the Ultherapy instruction a hygiene problem?

No — and it is important not to read it that way.

Reusable-between-patients is an ordinary, regulated category of medical device. Ultrasound probes in hospitals work the same way, and the manufacturer does not leave the question open: the Ulthera IFU specifies the disinfectant, the technique, and the minimum contact time, and adds that “Neither the transducers nor the handpiece should be submerged in liquid” and to “Place the transducer back into its original packaging between uses.”

We are not evaluating whether any clinic follows that procedure, and we have not reviewed any infection data. What the two manuals give you is narrower and more useful: the right question changes depending on the machine. For Thermage, the question is whether the tip is new and genuine. For Ultherapy, the question is the disinfection routine, because that is the control the manufacturer actually specifies.

How many shots does one cartridge hold?

We could not find out, and that is worth saying plainly.

The Ulthera documentation confirms a transducer has a “total treatment line capacity” and shows it on screen — but none of the Merz documents we read state what that number is for any transducer model. We also could not find published cartridge shot ratings for the Korean HIFU and RF devices in their manufacturers’ own product pages.

Numbers do circulate online. We found a specific figure being repeated on social media for the Ultherapy transducer; we could not trace it to any manufacturer or regulator document, so we are not repeating it here. An unsourced capacity figure is worse than none, because it invites arithmetic that may be entirely wrong.

What you can rely on is the structure, not the number: the consumable is metered, the meter is visible on the machine, and the clinic knows the figure even when the internet does not.

What else changes the number on your quote?

Shots are only one of five axes. Change any one and two quotes stop being comparable.

Toxin Units are the trap. BOTOX Cosmetic’s US prescribing information states that “The potency Units of BOTOX Cosmetic are specific to the preparation and assay method utilized” (§5.1), and that units “cannot be compared to nor converted into units of any other botulinum toxin products assessed with any other specific assay method” (§2.1). For reference, that label puts a full glabellar-line dose at 20 Units, and the vials at 50 and 100 Units.

So “50 units” quoted for one brand and “50 units” quoted for another are not the same quantity of anything. A price per unit compared across brands is not a comparison. Korean quotes make this harder still by sometimes pricing toxin in cc — which is reconstitution volume, not potency, and tells you nothing at all.

Filler is quoted in cc or mL, which is honest, but lidocaine-containing versions of the same filler are separate products with their own approvals — so “the same filler” may not be.

And then there is VAT. Medical services in Korea are exempt from value-added tax as a rule, but cosmetic-purpose treatment is written out of that exemption by name. The Enforcement Decree of the Value-Added Tax Act, Article 35, subparagraph 1, removes the exemption for treatment excluded from national health insurance benefit under Article 41(4) of the National Health Insurance Act, and then lists it: item (a) covers double-eyelid surgery, rhinoplasty, breast augmentation or reduction, liposuction, wrinkle removal, facial contouring, dental cosmetic work and orthognathic surgery; item (b) covers pigmented-lesion, freckle and melasma treatment, acne treatment, hair removal, hair-loss treatment, hair transplant, tattooing and tattoo removal, piercing, fat dissolving, skin regeneration, skin whitening, anti-aging treatment and pore reduction. The rate is 10 percent (Value-Added Tax Act, Article 30: “The value-added tax rate shall be 10 percent”) — we set out the full list of procedures the decree names separately. The decree writes its own exceptions back into the exemption — treatment of complications caused by cosmetic surgery, reconstruction of a congenital deformity, breast reconstruction after cancer surgery, and reconstruction after tumour removal. That is why Korean clinic price pages routinely carry the line 부가세 별도 (VAT not included). Some price lists say it. Some do not say anything, which is not the same as saying it is included. If the quote does not state which, it is a question, not an assumption — and the 10% refund that foreign patients used to reclaim at the airport ended on 31 December 2025.

What can you ask?

The point of all of this is not to negotiate harder. It is to make two quotes describe the same thing before you compare them.

• “How many shots, and of what?” A price without a shot count is not a price. A shot count without the device model is not a quantity.
• “Is the consumable single-use on this machine?” For a tip-based device you can ask to see it opened. For a transducer-based device, ask instead how it is disinfected between patients — that is the control the manufacturer specifies.
• “Which brand, and how many Units?” For toxin, both halves are required. One without the other is not information.
• “Is VAT included?” Ask even when the list says nothing, because saying nothing is common.
• “Can I have the quote written down with the units on it?” A clinic that quotes in units can write in units.

The posted-price rule that protects Korean patients has a gap that foreign patients fall through, and the first number you are given functions as an opening position rather than a fixed price. Neither of those is a reason to distrust a clinic. They are reasons to make the unit explicit before the number matters.

If you want to check the other claim on the tablet — the FDA one — we read what four Korean radiofrequency devices were actually cleared for.

Common questions

Why does a Korean clinic quote lifting treatments in shots?

Because the machines meter themselves. The Ulthera System displays the treatment lines remaining against the transducer’s total capacity and stops when it reaches zero. The clinic is passing on a quantity the hardware enforces.

Is a Thermage tip reused between patients?

The manufacturer says it must not be. The Thermage CPT technical manual states in three places that treatment tips are for single patient use only and warns of cross contamination between patients. We read the CPT manual, not the FLX one.

Is an Ultherapy transducer reused between patients?

Yes, by design. The Ulthera System IFU describes the standard practice for cleaning and low-level disinfection of transducers between patients using a 70% isopropyl alcohol wipe for at least one minute. This is an ordinary category of reusable medical device, not a defect.

How many shots are in one cartridge?

We do not know. The manufacturer documents we read confirm a transducer has a total line capacity and show it on screen, but none of them state the figure. Numbers circulating online could not be traced to a manufacturer or regulator, so we have not repeated them.

Are 50 units of one toxin brand the same as 50 units of another?

No. BOTOX Cosmetic’s prescribing information states that its potency Units are specific to its own preparation and assay method and cannot be converted into the units of any other botulinum toxin product. A price per unit compared across brands is not a comparison.

Sources

Manufacturer documents read in the original on 19 August 2026. Korean statutes read in the original on the National Law Information Center on 21 August 2026.

• Thermage CPT System Technical User’s Manual, model TG-2B, document P009240-06 (September 2021), §§4.2.53, 6.7, 10.1.4 — https://ca.thermage.com/siteassets/hcp/pdf/thermage-cpt-technical-users-manual-model-tg-2b-p-np009240-06-2021.pdf
• Ulthera System Instructions for Use, document 1015107IFU Rev 05 (April 2024), §§7.2.1, 8, 9.1 — https://merzaesthetics.com/app/uploads/2024/09/1015107IFU-Rev-05-US-Ultherapy.pdf
• Value-Added Tax Act (부가가치세법), Article 26(1)5 and Article 30 — current text as of enforcement 2 January 2026, Act No. 21065 — https://www.law.go.kr/법령/부가가치세법
• Enforcement Decree of the Value-Added Tax Act (부가가치세법 시행령), Article 35, subparagraph 1, items (a) and (b) — current text as of enforcement 27 February 2026, Presidential Decree No. 36133 — https://www.law.go.kr/법령/부가가치세법시행령
• BOTOX Cosmetic US Prescribing Information, §§2.1, 2.2, 3, 5.1, via the openFDA drug label API — https://api.fda.gov/drug/label.json

The Clinic Notes — verified, source-cited information on cosmetic medicine in South Korea. We accept no payments or benefits from clinics, hospitals, doctors, or referral agencies.

Note №28PATIENT STATISTICS

If you are reading this site because you are considering a skin treatment in Korea, here is the single most contextualising number we can offer: last year, 2.01 million foreign patients were treated in Korea — the first time the figure has ever passed two million — and 62.9% of them, about 1.31 million people, went to a dermatology clinic.

The figures come from the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s annual count, announced in April 2026. They describe a market that has not just recovered since the pandemic but changed shape: growth is being driven almost entirely by skin, not surgery.

The numbers

By nationality, China led 2025 with 618,973 patients (up 137.5%), Japan followed with 600,009, and Taiwan — the fastest-growing sizeable group two years running — sent 185,715, up 122.5%. Reported medical spending reached ₩3.3 trillion. For scale: in the whole period 2009–2024, Korea’s cumulative count was about 5 million foreign patients; 2025 alone added another two.

What the shape of the data tells you

• You are not an edge case. Whatever nervousness you feel booking treatment abroad, the system you are entering processed two million people like you last year. Intake forms, payment flows and aftercare instructions for foreigners are now routine at the clinics doing this volume.
• The typical foreign patient is not getting surgery. Dermatology outnumbers plastic surgery nearly six to one. The representative visit is a non-surgical skin treatment at a small Seoul clinic — exactly the segment where pricing, package terms and review reliability matter most.
• Volume cuts both ways. Korea’s medical-dispute agency reported dermatology as its fastest-growing complaint category in its latest yearbook (+96.6%). More patients means more of everything — including things going wrong. Know the dispute system before you need it.

Why is the skew toward dermatology so extreme? That question deserves its own article — we look at what the numbers do and do not explain in a companion piece.

Sources and last verification

• Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2025 foreign patient statistics (announced 24 April 2026), as reported with full figures by Money Today — mt.co.kr — accessed 18 August 2026
• Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2024 foreign patient statistics (announced 2 April 2025) — medigatenews.com — accessed 18 August 2026
• Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Agency, 2025 statistical yearbook (dermatology complaint growth) — previously verified for our dispute-system coverage — accessed 18 August 2026

Verified 18 August 2026. Annual statistics are revised occasionally; the ministry’s releases are the primary source.

Related: those 2.01 million patients are served by a registered supply side — paid patient referral is a criminal offence in Korea, and foreign patients are the only carve-out.

Note №27RETAIL DATA

If you have stood in an Olive Young in Myeong-dong recently and wondered why half the store seems to be visitors with suitcases, the company’s own numbers say you were not imagining it. In 2022, foreign customers were 2% of Olive Young’s offline sales. In 2025, they were 25% — and spent over ₩1 trillion in eleven months.

The figures come from CJ Olive Young’s December 2025 announcement, and they describe something bigger than one retailer’s good year: Korea’s beauty chain has effectively become tourism infrastructure.

The numbers, in one table

It is not just Seoul anymore

Comparing January–October 2025 with 2022, Olive Young’s foreign sales outside the capital region grew 87-fold — Jeju nearly 200-fold, Gwangju 72-fold, Busan 59-fold. About 40% of foreign customers visited two or more stores on a trip. The K-beauty shopping run has become a repeatable itinerary item, not a Myeong-dong one-off.

Three practical notes before you shop

• The tax refund happens at the till. Immediate refund on qualifying purchases is why 88% of the country’s domestic cosmetics tax-free transactions run through this one chain — bring your passport, and note the on-the-spot caps differ from the medical VAT story we’ve covered.
• Functional claims on the shelf are regulated claims. The 기능성화장품 label system we describe in a companion article applies to exactly the products filling these stores.
• Retail is the safe end of K-beauty. Nothing sold on an Olive Young shelf involves the clinic-side questions — licensing, procedures, disputes — that the rest of this site exists to untangle.

Sources and last verification

• CJ Olive Young announcement of foreign-customer figures (3 December 2025), as reported with full numbers by Cheonji Ilbo — newscj.com — accessed 18 August 2026
• Corroborating retail-press coverage of the ₩1 trillion foreign-sales milestone — mstoday.co.kr — accessed 18 August 2026

Verified 18 August 2026. Company-reported figures; the underlying press statement is the primary source.

Related: Daiso caps prices at 5,000 won — and one won can double your tax refund.

Related: Duty-free saves 10% on Korean cosmetics — Olive Young discounts more.

Note №24INDUSTRY DATA

For most of modern cosmetics history, the answer to “who sells the world its beauty products” was France, then the United States, then everyone else. In 2024, the “everyone else” column produced a challenger. South Korea exported US$10.2 billion of cosmetics — up 20.3% in a single year — and moved past Germany into third place worldwide.

The sharper number sits inside the American market: among cosmetics the United States imports, Korean products took a 22.2% share in 2024 — the largest of any country, ahead of France at 16.3%. The figures come from Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, published in May 2025.

The 2024 numbers

Korea’s customer mix also flipped. China, long the dominant buyer, fell 10.3% to US$2.49 billion, while exports to the United States jumped 56.4% to US$1.90 billion and Japan rose 29.1% to US$1.04 billion. Domestic production hit a record ₩17.5 trillion, up 20.9%.

Why this matters if you’re a visitor, not an investor

• The stuff you buy here is the export product. The serums on a Seoul shelf are the same formulations driving a $10 billion export machine — you are shopping at the source, usually at source prices.
• Regulation is part of the story. Korea runs a formal review system for cosmetics that claim functional effects — whitening, wrinkle care, UV protection — which is one reason the labels read differently here (we cover that system in a separate article).
• Skincare products are not procedures. A world-class cosmetics industry and a clinic industry are adjacent but separately regulated worlds — a distinction this site spends a lot of time on.

Sources and last verification

• Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, 2024 cosmetics production/export statistics (announced 27 May 2025), as reported with full figures by Cos’in Korea — cosinkorea.com — accessed 18 August 2026
• Corroborating trade-press reports of the same MFDS release — datanews.co.kr — accessed 18 August 2026

Verified 18 August 2026. Export rankings change yearly; the figures above are the official 2024 full-year statistics.