Kolmar Can See the Fakes. It Can't Sue a Single One.

Korea's cosmetics exports reached US$11.1 billion in the first nine months of 2026, up 31.1 percent, with the United States taking US$2.35 billion of that. When the Minister of SMEs and Startups toured Kolmar Korea's Sejong plant on Friday, October 16, the company that fills those units named its largest problem, and it was neither capacity nor tariffs. It was counterfeits on overseas platforms. The company that raised it owns no trademark on anything it makes.

What did the manufacturer actually tell the minister?

Minister Lee So-young spent the visit on the floor of a plant run by an ODM, an original design manufacturer, meaning a contractor that both develops the formulation and produces it under a client's brand name. Kolmar Korea was founded in 1990 and the brands named at the plant included Beauty of Joseon and d'Alba.

Chief executive Choi Hyun-kyu named the spread of counterfeit cosmetics overseas as K-beauty's single biggest concern, and said small indie brands exporting to North America and Europe are struggling with copies of their products in those markets. He pointed to counterfeits of Beauty of Joseon and APR products that the Korean Intellectual Property Office had recently detected. Shim Jae-yoon, director general for global growth policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said the ministry is cooperating with the patent office and discussing response measures with other ministries. No measure was named.

What is the plant's actual output, and whose figure is it?

The capacity numbers from the visit are the company's own, and the two accounts of the same tour do not reconcile. One puts the Sejong plant at 38 filling and packaging lines and annual capacity of about 600 million units. Another puts it at 11 filling and packaging lines and about 890 million units a year. Both describe 2,500 to 3,000 items produced a month, 35 mixing tanks, and roughly 7,000 raw materials in use across the company. Production has been managed digitally in real time since 2023.

The gap matters less as a fact about Kolmar than as a reminder of where these figures come from. Plant capacity in this industry is almost never disclosed in a filing. It is stated on a tour, and it is restated by whoever took the tour.

Where did the export growth the fakes follow actually go?

The ministry's own export release, published October 2, puts nine-month cosmetics exports at US$11.1 billion, up 31.1 percent, which is about 97 percent of the 2025 full-year total of US$11.42 billion. Skincare drove it, at US$8.72 billion and up 45.1 percent, while color cosmetics fell 3.6 percent to US$1.11 billion.

Korean cosmetics exports grew 31.1% in the first nine months of 2026. The fastest growth was not in the largest markets.

The United States took US$2.35 billion, up 40.6 percent, a 21.1 percent share against 10.8 percent in 2022. China took US$1.58 billion, up 0.4 percent, a 14.2 percent share against 46.7 percent in 2022. Behind them, the Netherlands rose 292.6 percent to US$369 million, the United Kingdom 179.3 percent to US$443 million, Canada 124.4 percent to US$285 million, and Japan 8.6 percent to US$889 million. Skincare shipments to the United States alone went from US$1.21 billion to US$1.80 billion.

Every one of those destinations regulates a sunscreen differently from the country that made it. That is the second thing the plant visit surfaced, and it is the more structural one.

Why is a Korean sunscreen a drug the moment it lands in the United States?

In Korea, sunscreen is a functional cosmetic. Ultraviolet protection is one of the notified functional categories under the Cosmetics Act, cleared either by a simplified report when the product uses notified ingredients at specified concentrations, or by a full evaluation dossier when it does not. The product is a cosmetic throughout.

In the United States it is not. The Food and Drug Administration regulates every product carrying a broad spectrum SPF claim as an over-the-counter drug, a medicine sold without a prescription under a monograph, which is the rulebook setting out which active ingredients, concentrations and label statements are permitted. A Kolmar Korea vice president, Lee Young-joo, raised exactly this at the plant, alongside the observation that country-specific ingredient and customs rules are where small brands lose time.

The same tube is a cosmetic in Seoul and a drug in Dallas. Nothing in the jar changes at the border. The compliance object does.

How rigid is the gate that drug status rests on?

On June 9, 2026, the FDA added bemotrizinol to the list of permitted sunscreen active ingredients, at concentrations up to 6 percent. The final order followed a proposed order issued December 12, 2025 and a public comment period that closed January 26, 2026. DSM Nutritional Products requested the addition.

One UV filter was added to the US monograph on June 9, 2026. FDA calls it the first new sunscreen active since the late 1990s.

The agency described it as the first new sunscreen active ingredient since the late 1990s, and the first added under the streamlined process created by the CARES Act. That is one ingredient admitted in close to three decades. A Korean formulator's bench and the American monograph are not running on the same clock, and the distance between them is not a scientific disagreement so much as a procedural one.

What does a counterfeit listing skip that an authentic shipment cannot?

An authentic sunscreen entering the United States presents itself as a drug: a registered facility, a listed product, monograph-conforming actives, and a Drug Facts panel. That is the cost of the shelf, and it is paid before the first unit sells.

A marketplace listing presents itself to nobody. It goes live, and the first review of it is a complaint. The counterfeits reported in October copied the package and, in the reported case of a Beauty of Joseon rice sunscreen sold through Amazon and TikTok Shop, the authenticity sticker and the retail price along with it. Industry accounts put detections and blocks of Korean cosmetics counterfeits on major overseas platforms at roughly 36,000 over the past two years, about double the level two years earlier. No agency is named as the source of that count, which makes it an order of magnitude rather than a statistic.

The copy is cheaper for the obvious reason, and for a second one that gets less attention. It skips the formulation. It also skips the drug gate the authentic unit paid to clear.

Why does the party that raised the problem hold no remedy?

Kolmar Korea manufactures. The trademark on the copied sunscreen does not belong to it. Beauty of Joseon is operated by Goodai Global, which also runs TIRTIR, and the registered mark in each destination market sits with the brand owner. So does the drug position in the United States, because the entity that registers the facility and lists the product is the one that owns the label.

The manufacturer carries the volume exposure. The trademark and the US drug filing sit with the brand owner.

A trademark complaint runs on a registered mark and is made by the party that holds it. An ODM holds none on the products it fills. Its order book moves with the client's volume, and every instrument that touches the copy, from a platform takedown to a customs recordation to an invalidation action against a squatted mark, belongs to someone else. That asymmetry is why the complaint surfaced at a plant visit rather than in a brand's disclosure.

What are the brands doing on their own?

Goodai Global has expanded its in-house intellectual property team. APR has introduced AI-based monitoring of overseas platforms. Both are described in industry accounts rather than in disclosures, and neither substitutes for a registration in the destination market, because monitoring produces evidence and a registration produces standing.

On the government side, what exists so far is coordination. The SME ministry described working with the patent office and talking to other ministries. Korean enforcement remains strongest where Korean agencies have jurisdiction, which is Korea's own border, and the revenue at issue is leaving on the other side of it.

Where does this leave the three parties?

For manufacturers. Capacity is not the binding constraint, and 38 lines against 11 is an argument about a press release. The binding constraint is that an ODM's revenue is exposed to a client's intellectual property position and the ODM holds no instrument to defend it. The lever it does hold is contractual: who pays for registration in each destination market, who monitors, and what happens to the order when a mark turns out to belong to somebody else.

For brands and buyers. A Korean sunscreen presents two separate questions and they are answerable from documents before a purchase order. Who owns the mark in the market the goods are going to, and what is the product's status under that market's drug rules. A brand that can answer the first and not the second has a shelf problem rather than a legal one, and the reverse is also true.

For regulators and investors. Korea clears the product as a cosmetic and polices copies at its own border. The United States admits it as a drug and moved its ingredient list once in nearly thirty years. Admission and enforcement are two different gates, run by two different agencies, on two different clocks. A genuine Korean sunscreen pays at both. A counterfeit presents itself at neither.