Korea’s culture exports are no longer a trend story — they are an earnings story. In the past twelve hours, cosmetics ODMs guided to record quarters, Blackpink became the first K-pop girl group to receive a national cultural medal, and Korean fashion brands began reopening stores in China.
K-beauty put up its strongest quarterly export figure on record. Small and mid-sized cosmetics exporters shipped $2.79 billion in the third quarter, up 28.6 percent year on year, bringing the January-to-September total to a record $7.65 billion. Growth was broad: North America rose 33.1 percent, Europe 58.6 percent and Latin America 141.3 percent, while online exports nearly doubled to $360 million. The boom has lifted the contract manufacturers behind indie brands. Analysts expect Cosmax operating profit to jump about 85 percent and Kolmar Korea’s roughly 54 percent. The health ministry is now opening K-beauty retail and experience spaces in Milan, Stuttgart and Paris.
K-pop’s week belonged to Blackpink. At the 17th Korea Popular Culture and Arts Awards, all four members received the Okgwan Order of Cultural Merit — the fourth class of the Order of Cultural Merit — the first K-pop girl group to do so, in their tenth debut year. BTS, meanwhile, closed 14 sold-out stadium shows across five South American cities with 853,000 attendees, and two of those shows will screen in cinemas in more than 80 countries. Girl-group competition has reignited on domestic charts, with A2O LITE holding first place and RESCENE releasing a new EP.
K-food exports reached $8.13 billion through September, a record. The agriculture ministry plans to certify 1,000 Korean restaurants overseas within five years, cutting the minimum operating history for certification from three years to one and introducing two grades. In November K-content spreads across platforms: the webtoon-based “The Remarried Empress” arrives on Disney+ on Nov. 4, Netflix releases Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” on Nov. 6 and the Korea-Japan thriller “The Blue Road” on Nov. 20.
In fashion, Musinsa, Matin Kim, Mardi Mercredi and Helinox Wear are expanding offline in mainland China, while Puma and designer Jiyong Kim launch a second collaboration on Nov. 7. Seoul also stood up a joint government council to fight overseas trademark squatting and counterfeits targeting K-brands.
Sources: Herald Business, Biospectrum Asia, SBS News, Yonhap, Nocut News, Korea Herald, Maeil Business Newspaper, Variety India, What’s on Netflix.