Korea’s Beauty Exports Hit a Record as the Map Moves Beyond Paris

South Korea exported a record $7.0 billion of beauty products in the first half of 2026, 27.3 per cent more than a year earlier, according to its Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

France is still the world’s largest exporter, as it has been since the 2000s. But the growth in beauty has moved to Asia, where Korea and now China develop skincare quickly and sell it through new channels, while France holds its lead through perfume and the strength of its names.

Korea has taken the ground France lost in the United States. In 2025 its beauty exports reached a record $11.4 billion, up 11.8 per cent, and Korea overtook the United States as the world’s second-largest exporter. The United States became its largest market that year, and in the first half of 2026 Korean exports there rose 41.5 per cent, while sales to China, once its main customer, fell. Skincare makes up three quarters of what Korea exports, and its products now reach 202 countries, up from 172.

China is following, mostly through Asia. Its cosmetics exports rose 9.2 per cent to $7.82 billion in 2025, according to China’s customs administration, and its exports to Southeast Asia have more than doubled in five years. Joy Group, the company behind Judydoll and Joocyee, has increased its international sales tenfold in three years, Florasis has turned from the United States to Southeast Asia, and in November Proya launches in 400 Ulta Beauty stores in the United States. An analysis of ITC Trade Map data by Playbook of Beauty puts China’s growth in the first half of 2026 at 32 per cent, against 8 per cent for France.

France keeps its lead in value but has lost its pace. Its cosmetics exports edged down to €22.4 billion in 2025, according to the industry federation FEBEA, after shipments to the United States fell by almost 19 per cent under American tariffs; they fell by close to 20 per cent again in the first quarter of 2026. The European Union now takes 54 per cent of French exports. Perfume was the strongest category, at €8 billion and growing, while make-up and skincare shrank.

For decades the beauty map had one centre. Beauty remains France’s second-largest export after aircraft, and its lead rests on names, perfume and a long tradition of luxury. Korea’s growth rests on something else: skincare developed quickly, tested on demanding customers at home and sold through retail and social platforms rather than through heritage. China is now taking the same path from a larger home market, first into Southeast Asia and then into American stores.

The shift follows a change in what people buy beauty for. The weight of the market has been moving from expression to vitality, from the face a person shows the world to the condition of the skin itself, and the new powers of skincare no longer sit only in Paris and New York. Perfume shows how strong a name can remain. But the places where beauty is made are multiplying, and with them the idea of what a beauty product promises: less the aura of a name, more what it does for the skin.