Key facts
- The environment ministry said the meeting with importers was a routine consultation and no decision has been made on offshore brands.
South Korea's environment ministry is reportedly reviewing whether to extend its label-free mandate for domestically produced bottled water to imported brands, officials said on November 8, 2026. The ministry discussed the plan with importers in a recent meeting and said it has not decided whether to apply the rule to offshore brands.
South Korea's 107 bottled water importers would face the same QR-code packaging requirement as the country's 63 domestic producers if the ministry extends the mandate, a change domestic producers have sought on equity grounds.
South Korea's environment ministry is reportedly reviewing plans to extend the label-free mandate for domestically produced drinking water to bottled water brands imported from overseas, officials said on November 8, 2026. The plan was discussed in a recent meeting with importers of foreign-produced bottled water, according to officials from the ministry. They said the meeting was a routine consultation with industry officials and that the ministry is still undecided on whether to apply the mandate to offshore brands.
South Korea has required all bottled water produced and sold domestically to be label-free starting early in 2026, replacing physical labels with QR codes on bottle caps and external packaging. The mandate is expected to reduce the country's annual plastic usage by 2,270 metric tons, according to the ministry of climate, energy and environment. Bottled water produced overseas is excluded from the mandate and is sold with traditional labels.
Domestic producers have raised equity concerns, arguing that competing products in the same market should be subject to the same standards. As of September 2024, there were 63 drinking water producers in South Korea, along with 107 importers of bottled water. The domestic market for bottled water has grown by an annual average of 7.6 percent since 2019, reaching $4.3 billion in 2024, according to data from Samil PwC Business Research, a local consulting agency.
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