Food allergies in Korea: who has to label, and who does not
This is the one subject where we quote the law and stop. What is verifiable is who must label what — not what is safe to eat. Knowing exactly where the duty ends is what tells you where your own checking has to start.
Packaged food: 19 substances, no threshold
Korea’s labeling rules name a fixed list of allergenic ingredients that must be declared on packaged food, and the rule says every one of them must be shown regardless of how much is in the finished product. Counted from the text of the schedule, the list has nineteen entries.
| On the label | Note |
|---|---|
| Eggs (poultry), milk, buckwheat, peanut, soybean, wheat | The six most often met at a Korean table |
| Mackerel, crab, shrimp, squid, shellfish (including oyster, abalone, mussel) | Fish other than mackerel is not on the list |
| Pork, chicken, beef | — |
| Peach, tomato | — |
| Walnut, pine nut | Other tree nuts are not on the list |
| Sulfites | Only when the finished product holds 10 mg or more of sulfur dioxide per kilogram |
Read the list for what is missing from it. Sesame — which means sesame oil and perilla oil, both of which are everywhere in Korean cooking — is not on it. Neither are almonds, cashews or other tree nuts beyond walnut and pine nut, nor fish other than mackerel, nor gelatin. A label that says nothing about them is not telling you they are absent. It is telling you nothing at all.
Restaurants: almost none of them have this duty
The duty to declare allergens on food that is cooked and sold on the premises reaches a very narrow band of businesses: franchises whose outlets, company-run and franchised together, number fifty or more, and that mainly sell foods aimed at children. Everything outside that band — which is very nearly every restaurant you will eat in — has no such obligation.
- A menu with no allergen information is not breaking a rule. There is no rule for it to break.
- No duty is not the same as no care. Plenty of kitchens will answer carefully if you ask — but the asking has to start with you, because in Korea the question is not routinely put to you first.
- Write it down. A sentence in Korean on your phone, shown at the counter, does more than a spoken question in English at a busy hour.
We will not tell you that a particular dish is safe, because we cannot verify that for your kitchen, your day and your allergy. What this page can do is show you exactly where the paperwork stops.
Where this comes from
Every number on this page was read at the source rather than in a summary. Where we could not read it at the source, the page says so instead of guessing.
Questions people actually ask
- Is sesame declared on Korean food labels?
- Not as an allergen — it is not among the nineteen substances the rule names. Since sesame oil and perilla oil are used constantly in Korean cooking, this is the gap worth knowing about before you rely on a label.
- Will a Korean restaurant ask about my allergies?
- Usually not first. In several countries staff routinely ask when taking an order; that has not become general practice here, and for ordinary restaurants there is no legal duty behind it either. Say it before you order rather than waiting to be asked.
- Are allergens marked on menus at big chains?
- Only in one narrow case: franchises with fifty or more outlets that mainly sell foods aimed at children. Outside that, a menu carrying allergen marks is doing it voluntarily rather than because it must.
