Food additives in South Korea

Ministry of Food and Drug Safety

South Korea permits a food additive only if the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (식품의약품안전처, MFDS) has designated it. The Food Sanitation Act (식품위생법), Article 7, has the Ministry set the standards and specifications for food additives by public notification, and the designated additives are listed in that notification, the Standards and Specifications for Food Additives (식품첨가물의 기준 및 규격).

The notification lists additives in sections: general food additives, processing aids (which include enzymes), nutrient fortifiers, mixed preparations, and sanitisers for utensils and packaging. It prints the INS and CAS numbers beside each item, so Korea can be matched to this site's pages by identifier and not only by name.

A version of the notification applies from its stated effective date, not from the day it is published. On 3 October 2026 the newest version, Notice No. 2026-50 (published 13 July 2026), does not take effect until 1 January 2028, so the version in force is Notice No. 2025-76, a full revision in force from 26 November 2025.

What this index holds

462 of the 1189 substances on this site carry a South Korea entry, across 462 provisions. Last retrieved 2026-10-18 from South Korea: Standards and Specifications for Food Additives (식품첨가물의 기준 및 규격), MFDS Notification, Part III, under Not protected by copyright: Article 7 of the Copyright Act of Korea excludes notices and public notifications issued by the national government. The National Law Information Center states that its legal information may be used freely, commercial use included, under the Act on the Provision and Use of Public Data, and that it has no legal effect: the Official Gazette (관보) prevails.

462 permitted, with conditions

What is read, and what is not

Read:

Part III of the notification, the item-by-item list of designated additives (general food additives, processing aids and nutrient fortifiers), matched to pages by CAS number, then INS number, then exact name, with each entry's main use (주용도) and standard for use (사용기준).
The standards for use in Korean, as published. The English beside each sentence is this site's description of what the sentence does, not a translation: there is no official English translation of the current notification.

Not read:

Mixed preparations (혼합제제류) and sanitisers for utensils and packaging, which share Part III but are not single additives.
Part IV, the compositional specifications, and Part II, the general standards that apply to every additive.
Amendments that are published but not yet in force, which are not law until their stated date.
Entries that have no page on this site yet. They are recorded on the unmatched-names page and are not given a page without a check, and entries whose identifiers disagreed with a page's are held for review and not matched.

What an empty row means

A page with no South Korea row proves less than it seems to: the substance may be designated under a name or number this site has not matched, or may be one of the entries held for review because its identifiers disagreed with the page's. Treat Korea's absences as unconfirmed.

160 names from this source could not be matched to a page and are listed on names this site could not match.

The instruments

Elsewhere

Compare South Korea with another regulator on the comparison pages, or read how the whole index is built in the method.