K-food in Numbers
Korean food is now sold in more than 200 countries. Here is its rise in numbers.
Korea's exports of fresh and processed farm foods passed $10 billion for the first time in 2025, up 4.3% from 2024. This is the agriculture ministry's provisional tally; seafood such as gim (김) is counted separately.
Agri-food exports have risen every year from 2016 to 2025, according to the ministry. The annual series in the chart shows the same ten straight increases.
Exports of Korean instant noodles keep setting records: $952 million in 2023, $1.25 billion in 2024 and $1.52 billion in 2025, a 21.9% rise in the latest year. It is the first single food item to pass $1.5 billion in a year.
Exports of gim, Korea's dried seaweed, passed $1 billion for the first time in 2025, up 13.7% from 2024 and up from $793 million in 2023. Gim is the largest item in Korea's record $3.33 billion of seafood exports.
K-Food+ is the ministry's wider measure: agri-food ($10.41 billion) plus related farm industries such as machinery, pesticides, fertilizer and veterinary medicine (about $3.2 billion). Both parts were record highs in 2025.
Korean agri-food products were exported to 207 countries in 2024, up from 199 in 2023.
The United States was the largest market for Korean agri-food for the second year running, up 13.2% from 2024. China was second with $1.59 billion.
A record high for the second year in a row. The 2024 total of $163.6 million had already passed the previous record of $159.9 million set in 2021.
Kimjang, the making and sharing of kimchi for the winter, was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013.
The knowledge and practice of making jang, the fermented sauces and pastes at the base of Korean cooking such as soy sauce, soybean paste and red chili paste, were inscribed in 2024.
The Codex Alimentarius, the food standards body of the FAO and WHO, lists the Standard for Kimchi as CXS 223-2001. The list shows it was last modified in 2022.
Kimchi Day was written into Korean law in 2020. As of November 2025, 16 places in 5 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, had also officially designated a Kimchi Day.
The MICHELIN Guide Seoul & Busan 2026 lists 42 starred restaurants in Seoul (1 with three stars, 10 with two, 31 with one) and 4 one-star restaurants in Busan. The guide first came to Korea in 2017.
A 2025 government survey counted 4,644 overseas outlets run by 122 Korean food-service companies in 56 countries, up from 3,722 outlets in 2020. The United States had the most, with 1,106.
Korean ice cream exports passed $100 million for the first time in 2025, up 21.6% from 2024. The United States was the biggest buyer.
Exports of processed rice foods, a group that includes tteokbokki (떡볶이), grew 38.4% in 2024. More than half went to the United States.
Agri-food exports by year, 2005–2025
Unit: US$ million. Exports of agricultural, livestock and forestry products and their processed foods (export subtotal, FOB), from the e-Nara Index table 'Agri-food export and import trends' (농림축산식품 수출입 동향), whose stated source is aT KATI. Seafood is not included. Read from the official table on 2026-10-01; the indicator was last updated 2026-03-11 and is updated once a year. The 2025 value here ($10,244 million) is lower than the ministry's provisional press-release figure ($10.41 billion); the two tallies differ in every recent year.
Data table
| Year | US$ million |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 2,222 |
| 2006 | 2,304 |
| 2007 | 2,532 |
| 2008 | 3,049 |
| 2009 | 3,299 |
| 2010 | 4,082 |
| 2011 | 5,383 |
| 2012 | 5,645 |
| 2013 | 5,725 |
| 2014 | 6,183 |
| 2015 | 6,104 |
| 2016 | 6,465 |
| 2017 | 6,827 |
| 2018 | 6,926 |
| 2019 | 7,025 |
| 2020 | 7,570 |
| 2021 | 8,560 |
| 2022 | 8,825 |
| 2023 | 9,022 |
| 2024 | 9,826 |
| 2025 | 10,244 |