Guides: South Korea 🇰🇷

Understanding allergens and food labels in South Korea

According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety of South Korea, food labels must list out the following 19 allergens:

• Eggs1 (난류, 알류, 달걀, 계란)
• Milk (우유)
• Buckwheat (메밀)
• Peanuts (땅콩)
• Soybeans (대두)
• Wheat (밀)
• Mackerel (고등어)
• Crab (게)
• Shrimp (새우)
• Pork (돼지고기)
• Peach (복숭아)
• Tomato (토마토)
• Sulfurous acid2 (아황산류)
• Walnuts (호두)  
• Chicken (닭고기)
• Beef (쇠고기)
• Squid (오징어)
• Shellfish3 (조개류)
• Pine nut (잣)
  1. Confined to those from poultry ↩︎
  2. Confined to cases where sulfurous acid is added and the final product includes 10mg/kg or more SO2 ↩︎
  3. Including oyster, abalone, and mussels ↩︎
When labelling a product, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety indicates that:
a) If a product uses raw materials containing allergens (even if these allergens are extracted or processed) they must be listed on the label. Additionally, a separate allergen label with a different background color must be added to highlight these allergens.
b) If a manufacturer uses the same equipment for both allergen-containing and allergen-free products, a warning label must be included to inform consumers of the potential for cross-contamination.
A Doritos label exemplifying both a) and b) bullet points.

A Doritos label exemplifying both a) and b).

Understanding South Korean cuisine

Korean cuisine often features ganjang (soy sauce), doenjang (fermented soybean paste), and gochujang (chili paste) as foundational flavorings. These sauces frequently contain wheat flour, which is used as a thickening agent and to enhance fermentation. This means that many Korean dishes, even those without obvious wheat-based ingredients, may contain gluten.

Others

For restaurants or cafes, we try to provide links for both Naver Maps and Kakao Maps; other apps like Google Maps or Apple Maps offer insufficient or outdated information in South Korea.