The EU and South Korea
Food additives permitted in one and not the other — and what each gap actually means.
240 additives are permitted in both. 158 are permitted in the EU with no permission in South Korea, none of them explicitly prohibited there. 222 are permitted in South Korea with no permission in the EU, of which 1 is explicitly prohibited or removed there.
A missing permission is rarely a ban. Usually no one has applied, the substance is named or grouped differently, or it falls under a different law. Only the first two groups below — prohibited, and removed — record a regulator’s decision against a substance, and even those are decisions about legal status, not findings this site draws about safety.
Permitted in the EU, no permission in South Korea
No South Korean listing matched 158
This site imports Part III of South Korea’s Standards and Specifications for Food Additives, and matches it by CAS number, then INS number, then exact name. A substance the notification lists under an identifier or name this site has not matched, or one held for review because its identifiers disagreed with a page’s, will appear here. Treat these as unconfirmed, not as absent.
Permitted in South Korea, no permission in the EU
Removed from the EU’s list 1
The EU once permitted these and has removed them. The date and the instrument are on each additive’s page.
| Additive | Function | In South Korea | In European Union |
|---|---|---|---|
| Titanium dioxide E171 | Colour | 1 provision | Removed with effect from 7 February 2022. Instrument |
Possibly covered by a related listing in the EU 5
The EU lists a substance under the same number — often a group entry such as “E 322 Lecithins” where the other regulator lists a single form. This site cannot tell whether that listing covers this form, so these are not counted as absent.
| Additive | Function | In South Korea | In European Union |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grape skin extract INS 163(ii) | Colour | 1 provision | Anthocyanins (E163) |
| Magnesium phosphate INS 343(iii) | Acidity regulator | 1 provision | Magnesium dihydrogen phosphate, Magnesium hydrogen phosphate, Magnesium phosphates (E343) |
| Maize morado color INS 163(iv) | — | 1 provision | Anthocyanins (E163) |
| Red cabbage color INS 163(v) | — | 1 provision | Anthocyanins (E163) |
| Sodium aluminium phosphate, basic INS 541(ii) | Acidity regulator | 1 provision | Sodium aluminium phosphate, acidic (E541) |
Regulated outside the additives list in the EU 89
Every function regulators give these — flavouring, enzyme, nutrient, solvent or processing aid — is one the EU regulates under separate rules, so they would not be expected on its list of food additives. Their absence here says nothing about whether the EU permits them.
Not on the EU’s list 127
The EU permits food additives only where it lists them, and these are not listed. That is not a finding against the substance: usually no one has applied for authorisation there. It does mean they may not be used as food additives in the EU today.
What this page is not
It is not a list of unsafe additives, and a regulator permitting something is not this site’s endorsement of it. Regulators reach different decisions on the same evidence, on different applications, and at different times. Each additive’s page shows every jurisdiction’s status with its citation, and where an assessing body has published a reading of the evidence, that reading, attributed.
Counts are of this site’s additive pages, which follow the regulators’ own listings: a group entry in one jurisdiction can correspond to several pages in another. Status as retrieved from each source; see Sources for dates.