Korean food is growing faster in Europe than in America or China
Photo: Joshua Colah on Unsplash
Korean food exports to Europe grew faster than those to the United States or China in the first eight months of this year, trade data reported last month showed, with Britain counted inside the European total.
Exports to Europe, a figure covering the European Union and the UK, reached $865m, around £640m, up 24.5% on the same period last year, according to the Korea Agricultural Trade Information portal. Total agricultural and fishery exports were $9.52bn, around £7bn, up 7.7%.
Exports to Europe rose 24.5% in eight months. Britain is inside that number, and nobody has published the British share of it.
No separate UK line has been published, so the British share is not public. What is public is the direction and the acceleration: Europe grew 13.6% across the whole of 2025, to $774m, the agriculture ministry said in January. It has grown at nearly double that rate in the eight months since.
On 14 September the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation said exports had passed $10bn in 253 days, the fastest on record and 19 days ahead of last year's pace, with the United States at $1.81bn and China at $1.67bn. Noodles did most of the work. Ramen alone accounted for $1.43bn in the eight-month figures, up 25%, with snacks at $531m and beverages at $461m.
What the agency is doing about Europe is the part worth watching. The Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation said it is running a one-stop export support system with 15 organisations to handle non-tariff barriers, naming European Union packaging rules alongside Indonesia's mandatory halal certification, the Seoul Economic Daily reported. A state agency building a compliance desk for EU packaging law is a government treating shelf access in Europe as the thing standing between it and the next billion.
Growth rates flatter a small base, and this one is small. Europe at $865m is less than half the American figure, and both are export values rather than retail sales: they measure what left Korea, not what anybody bought. Exports to the Netherlands, where a large share of Europe's imported food clears customs, rose 14.4% to $229.6m on the agency's own figures, and a pallet landing in Rotterdam counts the same whether it sells in Dublin or Dagenham.
Seoul has set a K-Food+ export target of $16bn for this year. The 2025 total was $13.62bn, up 5.1%, the tenth consecutive year of growth.
Korea shipped more ramen to the world in eight months than it shipped food of every kind to Europe.
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