Decoded Korea

Korea's chemical substance management system, K-REACH, tracks over 47,000 registered substances. Each one carries up to 9 regulatory flags — toxic, restricted, prohibited, priority management, CMR, accident preparedness, registration required, persistent organic pollutant, and Rotterdam Convention. Of those 47,000+, only 97 carry the "prohibited" flag. That is 0.2% of the database. These are substances where handling itself is banned in Korea — manufacturing, import, and use are all prohibited. We pulled the full list to see what Korea considers dangerous enough to ban entirely. What the 97 look like The 97 prohibited substances fall into a few recognizable groups. Banned pesticides — the largest group About half the list consists of pesticides that were widely used in agriculture before being phased out globally. Aldrin, Dieldrin, Endrin, Heptachlor, Chlordan, Endosulfan, Paraquat, Parathion — names that show up in environmental science textbooks. Most of these ar...