Decoded Korea

Walk through the fragrance aisle of a beauty store and the word natural does most of the selling. Essential oils, botanical extracts, plant-derived aromatics. The implied contrast is with synthetic fragrance, which appears on ingredient lists as the single word "parfum" and carries a reputation to match. We checked whether regulators treat the two categories differently. Our database holds 21,796 cosmetic ingredients and 31,191 regulatory entries across 10 markets. Of those ingredients, 1,517 are listed with a fragrance function. We sorted them by whether our records define them as plant-derived or as a chemical structure, and compared what regulators did to each group. The answer has two halves that point in opposite directions. Fragrance is a heavily regulated category The group as a whole is worth a number first. Population Ingredients Carrying a regulatory designation Rate Fragrance functions 1,517 305 20.11% All ingredients 21,796 1,486 6.82% Fragran...

Walk down a shampoo aisle and a good share of the bottles say sulfate-free. The phrase has been on packaging long enough that most shoppers read it as a safety claim, the way paraben-free is read. Something was taken out, and taking it out was an improvement. We checked what regulators actually say about sulfates. Our database holds 21,796 cosmetic ingredients and 31,191 regulatory entries across 10 markets, and 280 of those ingredients have Sulfate in the INCI name. Thirty-five of them carry a regulatory entry. That is 12.5 percent, against a database-wide rate of 3.95 percent. Taken alone, that ratio says sulfates are unusually regulated. The 35 say something else. The sulfates people are avoiding Start with the ones the marketing is aimed at. These are the cleansing surfactants used in shampoo and body wash. Ingredient Regulatory entries across 10 markets Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) 0 Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) 0 Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate 0 Ammonium Laureth Sulfat...

Summer is when your skincare is most likely to spoil. Heat and humidity accelerate the growth of bacteria, mold, and yeast in any product that contains water — a face cream opened daily in a steamy bathroom is a small ecosystem. Preservatives are what stop that. Without them, a contaminated product can cause skin or eye infections while still looking and smelling normal. So preservatives are not the villains the "preservative-free" marketing implies. They are doing necessary work, especially in the season when contamination risk peaks. But the most effective ones are also among the most regulated ingredients in cosmetics — because effectiveness against microbes and safety on human skin pull in opposite directions. We queried our database of 21,796 ingredients across 10 markets and pulled the major preservatives. The pattern is consistent: the better a preservative works, the more tightly it tends to be capped. Methylisothiazolinone: restricted in nine markets Methylisothi...

Walk down any skincare aisle and the exfoliating acids sit side by side: a 2% BHA liquid, an 8% AHA toner, a PHA serum marketed for sensitive skin. The packaging treats them as one family. Regulators do not. We queried our database of 21,796 cosmetic ingredients across 10 markets and pulled every exfoliating acid with a regulatory entry. Salicylic acid — the BHA — is restricted in 9 of the 10 markets we track. Glycolic acid, the most common AHA, carries explicit restrictions in 3. The PHAs barely register at all, with Canada as the main exception. Same shelf, same purpose, very different rulebooks. The three acid families A quick orientation for anyone outside formulation work. AHAs — glycolic, lactic, mandelic, malic, tartaric — are water-soluble acids that loosen the bonds between dead skin cells at the surface. BHA means salicylic acid in practice: oil-soluble, able to work inside pores, which is why it dominates acne products. PHAs — gluconolactone, lactobionic acid — are chemi...

Every few months, a post goes viral claiming that Europe bans more than a thousand cosmetic ingredients while the US bans barely a dozen. The numbers are usually right, but they compare only two markets. We wanted the full picture, so we counted the ingredient restrictions in all 10 markets our database covers. The gap is wider than the usual comparison suggests. The EU accounts for 5,342 ingredient restrictions in our data. The US has 111. The eight markets in between fall into a pattern that says more about regulatory philosophy than about safety. The ranking Each number below counts how many cosmetic ingredient restrictions — prohibitions plus concentration limits — each market has in our regulatory database. Rank Market Total Prohibited Restricted 1 EU 5,342 4,039 1,262 2 ASEAN 4,886 3,891 952 3 China 4,180 3,373 772 4 Korea 4,079 3,356 690 5 Brazil 4,052 3,220 802 5 Argentina 4,052 3,220 802 7 Taiwan 2,156 1,459 678 8 Canada 1,947 1,699 248 9 Japan 386 95 ...

Retinal serums sell at 0.05%, 0.1%, and 0.2%. Bakuchiol is marketed as a plant-based retinol alternative. Granactive Retinoid appears on ingredient lists as hydroxypinacolone retinoate. All are vitamin A derivatives or stand-ins, all are sold as retinol's gentler or stronger relatives, and none has a concentration limit in any of the 10 countries we track. In an earlier post, we covered how the EU set the first hard limits on retinol in 2024. This time we checked every other retinoid in our database to see which ones those limits actually reached. Of the 26 retinoid compounds we track, only three are restricted anywhere — retinol, retinyl acetate, and retinyl palmitate. The other 23, including retinal, which is more potent than retinol, carry no concentration limit in any market we cover. Why retinal is the stronger one Every vitamin A derivative has to convert to retinoic acid before skin can use it. The number of conversion steps sets both potency and irritation. Retinyl est...

When a cosmetic product is found to violate Korean cosmetic regulations, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) can order it off shelves. Every recall order ends up in a public registry, available through the government's open-data portal. We pulled the full registry through data.go.kr and read every case. It contains 30 active recall orders, and 18 of them came from just four companies. The count is small partly because of how the registry works. Each recall order stays visible for three years from the order date, so what we see is a rolling window rather than a lifetime tally. The earliest case dates to June 2023. The most recent is February 2026. Comparing 30 to other countries is tricky. EU RAPEX, for instance, lists products in market-surveillance categories that overlap with but do not match Korea's recall criteria. Four companies, 18 of 30 cases Four manufacturers account for more than half the registry: One OEM wet-wipe maker had eight separate wet-wipe pro...