Functional Cosmetics in Korea: The 11 Claims the Law Actually Allows

If you have read a Korean skincare label and seen the words 기능성화장품 — "functional cosmetics" — next to a claim like brightening or wrinkle improvement, that is not a marketing flourish. It is a legal category, and the list of things a product in it may claim is closed. There are exactly eleven entries, written out in a government rule, and anything outside them is not a functional claim in Korea at all.

This page sets out those eleven entries in the rule's own words, says plainly which familiar skincare promises are not on the list, and shows you where to read the rule yourself. It names no products and no ingredients, for a reason given at the end.

Where the list comes from

The eleven entries are in Article 2 of the Enforcement Rule of the Cosmetics Act (화장품법 시행규칙 제2조, "Scope of functional cosmetics"). The version read for this page is the one in force from 2 April 2026 (Prime Minister's Rule No. 2109, amended 31 March 2026).

The article opens by saying what it is doing:

「화장품법」(이하 “법”이라 한다) 제2조제2호 각 목 외의 부분에서 “총리령으로 정하는 화장품”이란 다음 각 호의 화장품을 말한다.

That is: where the Cosmetics Act itself says "cosmetics prescribed by Prime Minister's Rule", this is the list it means. So the Act creates the category and the rule fills it in — which is why the list can only change when the rule changes.

The eleven, in the rule's own words

The English column below is my translation; the Korean original sits beside it so you can check the wording rather than take mine. Where the rule says "도움을 주는" I have written "helps with" — that softness is in the original and it matters, as the next section explains.

#	What the rule allows the product to claim	Korean original
1	Keeps melanin from settling in the skin, so it holds back the forming of freckles and dark spots, and in that way helps with brightening	피부에 멜라닌색소가 침착하는 것을 방지하여 기미ㆍ주근깨 등의 생성을 억제함으로써 피부의 미백에 도움을 주는 기능을 가진 화장품
2	Lightens melanin already settled in the skin, and in that way helps with brightening	피부에 침착된 멜라닌색소의 색을 엷게 하여 피부의 미백에 도움을 주는 기능을 가진 화장품
3	Gives the skin firmness and so eases or improves wrinkles	피부에 탄력을 주어 피부의 주름을 완화 또는 개선하는 기능을 가진 화장품
4	Shields against strong sun so the skin tans evenly	강한 햇볕을 방지하여 피부를 곱게 태워주는 기능을 가진 화장품
5	Blocks or scatters ultraviolet light and so protects the skin from it	자외선을 차단 또는 산란시켜 자외선으로부터 피부를 보호하는 기능을 가진 화장품
6	Changes the colour of hair, including removing dye or colour — but not products that change hair colour only temporarily	모발의 색상을 변화[탈염(脫染)ㆍ탈색(脫色)을 포함한다]시키는 기능을 가진 화장품. 다만, 일시적으로 모발의 색상을 변화시키는 제품은 제외한다.
7	Removes body hair — but not products that remove it physically	체모를 제거하는 기능을 가진 화장품. 다만, 물리적으로 체모를 제거하는 제품은 제외한다.
8	Helps ease the signs of hair loss — but not products that only make hair look thicker, such as by coating it	탈모 증상의 완화에 도움을 주는 화장품. 다만, 코팅 등 물리적으로 모발을 굵게 보이게 하는 제품은 제외한다.
9	Helps calm acne-prone skin — limited to cleansing products for the body	여드름성 피부를 완화하는 데 도움을 주는 화장품. 다만, 인체세정용 제품류로 한정한다.
10	Restores the function of the skin barrier (the outermost horny layer of the epidermis) and so helps improve itching and the like	피부장벽(피부의 가장 바깥 쪽에 존재하는 각질층의 표피를 말한다)의 기능을 회복하여 가려움 등의 개선에 도움을 주는 화장품
11	Helps lighten the red lines left by stretch marks	튼살로 인한 붉은 선을 엷게 하는 데 도움을 주는 화장품

Two things are worth noticing straight away. Entries 1 and 2 are both about brightening but describe different mechanisms — stopping melanin from settling, versus lightening melanin already there. And entries 4 and 5 point in opposite directions: one is for tanning evenly, the other for blocking ultraviolet light.

What is not on the list

This is the part that surprises people, because the words left out are the ones labels use most:

• Moisturising / hydration. Not a functional type. A product can of course moisturise, and may say so — it simply is not making a *functional* claim when it does.
• Pores. Nothing in the eleven entries mentions pore size or appearance.
• Exfoliation, dead-skin removal. Not there. Note that entry 10 mentions the horny layer, but only as part of the definition of the skin barrier — the claim is barrier function and itching, not removing anything.
• Firmness on its own. Entry 3 pairs firmness with wrinkles: it gives firmness *and so* eases or improves wrinkles. Firmness by itself is not one of the eleven.
• Regeneration, repair, healing, anything that reads as treatment. Those are the language of medicines, not cosmetics.

So when a Korean product is registered as a functional cosmetic, it was registered against one or more of those eleven lines — not against "hydration" or "pore care", however prominent those words are on the box.

A short checklist for reading a Korean label

• Find the words 기능성화장품 or an English "functional" marking. No marking means no functional claim was registered.
• Match the claim on the front to one of the eleven lines above. If you cannot, it is an ordinary cosmetic claim.
• Read the verb. "도움을 준다" / "helps" is what the rule permits. A flat promise to remove or cure is not.
• For an acne claim, check what kind of product you are holding — see the next section.

The two wordings that trip people up

"Helps with", not "does". Nine of the eleven entries are written as 도움을 주는 — helping, contributing to. The rule does not let a product say it erases wrinkles or whitens skin outright; it lets the product say it helps. When a translated label reads like a flat guarantee, the guarantee is the translator's, not the rule's.

The acne entry is narrower than it looks. Entry 9 ends with 다만, 인체세정용 제품류로 한정한다 — limited to body-cleansing product types. So a registered acne-related functional claim belongs to a cleanser. A serum or cream making the same claim is not covered by entry 9, whatever the marketing says. This is the single most useful thing on this page if you shop K-beauty for acne-prone skin.

Entries 6 and 7 exclude the obvious cases. Hair colour that washes out is excluded from 6; hair removal that works physically is excluded from 7. The rule is drawing a line around chemical action.

How to check this yourself

• Open 국가법령정보센터 and read 화장품법 시행규칙 제2조. The page carries its own 시행 date and rule number in square brackets at the top — compare those with the ones quoted above, because a rule can be amended at any time.
• One practical note if you try to fetch it with a script rather than a browser: the article page returns a small frame, and the text arrives from an inner request. Reading it in a browser avoids that entirely.
• Korean statutes, enforcement rules and government notices are not protected by copyright under Article 7 of the Korean Copyright Act, which is why the Korean wording above can be quoted in full rather than paraphrased.

What this page does not cover — and why

Which ingredients are approved for which of the eleven types. That pairing does not live in the rule above; it lives in a separate Ministry of Food and Drug Safety notice (기능성화장품 기준 및 시험방법). We identified the notice in force — MFDS Notice No. 2025-89, effective 16 December 2025 — but could not retrieve its appendix, which is where the ingredient lists sit. Until we have that text, this page names no ingredient and asserts no ingredient-to-type pairing. Writing "ingredient X is the approved brightening agent" without the appendix in hand would be a guess dressed as a fact.

Specific products or brands. Not covered here, by choice. Whether a given product is registered is a question about that product's filing, not about the rule.

Anything medical. The eleven entries are the outer edge of what a cosmetic may claim in Korea. If a claim sounds like treatment, the right question is not which entry it falls under but whether it should be on a cosmetic at all.

Sources

• 화장품법 시행규칙 제2조 (Scope of functional cosmetics) — 국가법령정보센터, https://www.law.go.kr/법령/화장품법 시행규칙/제2조 . Read as of 8 October 2026. Edition read: [시행 2026. 4. 2.] [총리령 제2109호, 2026. 3. 31., 일부개정]. The eleven entries and the opening sentence are quoted from this article; the English is my translation and the Korean original is printed beside it.
• 저작권법 제7조 (Works not protected) — 국가법령정보센터, https://www.law.go.kr/법령/저작권법/제7조 . Edition read: [시행 2026. 8. 11.] [법률 제21336호, 2026. 2. 10., 일부개정]. Items 1 and 2 of that article place statutes, rules and government notices outside copyright protection.
• Not obtained: the appendix of MFDS Notice No. 2025-89 (기능성화장품 기준 및 시험방법). Named here so that the gap is visible rather than silently filled.

Editor's note

Checked (2026-10-08): every one of the eleven entries was read from the enforcement rule itself and is printed here in the original Korean alongside my English. The opening sentence, the edition line, and the two provisos quoted in full (the acne limitation and the temporary-hair-colour exclusion) come from the same article.

Not checked: which ingredients are approved under each entry, and whether any particular product is registered. Both need documents we do not have.

Deliberately left out: ingredient-to-type pairings, product names, and any claim phrased as a result rather than as help. There are no statistics, no study figures and no percentages on this page — a skincare page without invented numbers is the point.