Walk into any Olive Young in Korea and try to find an SPF 30 sunscreen. It takes a while. The shelves are dominated by SPF 50+ products — not because stores choose to stock them that way, but because that is what Korean companies make. We pulled the data to see how extreme this really is. Using the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) functional cosmetics product database — 189,692 product filings from 2008 to early 2026 — we looked at every sunscreen product registered in Korea and counted SPF values. The result: in 2025, 69% of all registered sunscreen products were SPF 50+. That is 2,805 out of 4,067 sunscreen filings. The numbers, year by year SPF 50+ was not always dominant. In 2013, only about a third of registered sunscreens were SPF 50+. The share crossed 50% in 2016 and has stayed above 60% since 2018. Year Total sunscreens SPF 50+ Share 2013 220 75 34.1% 2014 2,585 968 37.4% 2015 2,789 1,287 46.1% 2016 3,356 1,917 57.1% 2017 ...
Decoding Korean cosmetic ingredients, chemical regulations, and safety data. Powered by real regulatory databases covering 21,000+ ingredients and 47,000+ chemical substances.