Korean beauty exports set another quarterly record while BTS extended its Billboard 200 run to 31 weeks and Korean food brands pushed deeper into European retail. Korean drama continued to dominate the non-English charts on Netflix.
K-Beauty: a record quarter and a record earnings outlook
Small and medium-sized cosmetics exports reached 2.79 billion US dollars in the third quarter, up 28.6 percent from a year earlier and the highest quarterly figure on record. Cumulative exports for January to September also hit a record 7.65 billion dollars, up 26.4 percent. Growth was broad: shipments to North America rose 33.1 percent, Europe 58.6 percent and Latin America 141.3 percent. Online cosmetics exports nearly doubled to 360 million dollars, accounting for 75.3 percent of all online exports by Korean SMEs. Analysts expect Cosmax to post record quarterly results with operating profit up an estimated 85 percent, while Kolmar Korea is seen rising 54 percent.
K-Pop: BTS holds the chart, Jisoo prepares a solo album
BTS ranked No. 46 on the Billboard 200 with ARIRANG, marking 31 consecutive weeks on the chart after a three-week run at No. 1. The lead single SWIM stands at No. 28 on the Billboard Global 200 and No. 10 on Global Excl. US. BLACKPINK member Jisoo released the pre-release single ADDICTED on October 30 ahead of her first full solo album.
K-Food and K-Drama: a Europe push and a Netflix sweep
Korean food exports to Europe reached 728 million dollars in the first nine months of 2026, up 23.5 percent and already close to the full-year 2025 total. Regulation remains a hurdle: the EU issued 18 notifications on Korean food this year, the most since 2020. In drama, SBS and Studio S placed four titles at No. 1 on the Netflix non-English TV chart this year, and November brings the Lee Chang-dong film Possible Love, the Korean Oscar submission, along with the Korea-Japan crime thriller Blue Road.
Sources: The Herald Business / Korea Herald / The Asia Business Daily / SBS News
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