Guides
Doing business with Korean companies
Korean business registration, tax invoices and supplier checks, explained for people who do not read Korean and have no reason to know how the National Tax Service works.
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Your Korean supplier wants payment to a personal account
When paying an individual’s account is normal, when it is a warning sign, and exactly how to check which one you are looking at before the money moves.
Is your Korean supplier a factory or a trading company?
How to tell whether the company quoting you actually manufactures, using the industry classification on its registration — and why the answer changes your risk.
The English name of a Korean company is not its legal name
Korean companies are registered under a Hangul name. The English version on the website and invoice is a convention — which matters when contracts and payments go wrong.
OEM, ODM and private label in Korean cosmetics
The three manufacturing arrangements a Korean beauty factory will offer you, what each means for who owns the formula, and which questions to ask before committing.
What Korean cosmetics GMP compliance actually certifies
CGMP is a manufacturing-process finding, not a product approval or a safety guarantee. What the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety listing covers, what it does not, and how to verify a claim.
Reading a Korean supplier's financial statements
Revenue, operating profit, the debt ratio and the current ratio — which figures actually predict whether a supplier can deliver, and which mean little on their own.
Korean holidays that will move your delivery date
Seollal, Chuseok and the summer shutdown stop Korean production for longer than the calendar suggests. When they fall, how far the disruption spreads, and how to plan an order around them.
Is your Korean supplier actually licensed to export?
The trade business number and the customs code are separate from the business registration number. What each is, which companies need them, and what it means when a supplier has none.
Finding Korean suppliers without getting burned
Where Korean manufacturers actually are — KOTRA, trade shows, industry associations — and why sourcing platforms produce the worst first contacts.
Contracts with Korean suppliers: the clauses that matter
Governing law, arbitration at the KCAB, and the handful of terms that decide what happens when an order goes wrong with a Korean manufacturer.
Letters of credit with a Korean supplier
When an L/C is worth its cost, how the documents actually get paid, and the discrepancies that stop a Korean bank releasing funds.
Pre-shipment inspection in Korea
How third-party inspection works for goods leaving Korea, what an inspector can and cannot tell you, and where in the schedule it has to sit to be any use.