Tools
Korean cosmetic label decoder화장품 라벨 번역
Take a photo of a Korean box, tube or bottle, or paste its text — no Korean keyboard needed. We translate the ingredients into their English INCI names, read the dates and sizes, and explain the claims.
1. Get the label text in
Photos are read on your own phone or computer and never uploaded. For the best result, fill the frame with the ingredient list (전성분), keep it flat and avoid glare.
Or use your phone’s own text scanner
iPhone
Tap the box above, tap it again and choose AutoFill → Scan Text (on iOS 16, tap the scan icon). Point the camera at the label and tap Insert. Korean text needs iOS 16 or later.
Android
Open Google Lens — the camera icon in the Google search bar — and take a picture of the label. Select the text, tap Copy, then come back and tap Paste text. On Samsung phones, the camera’s T button does the same.
Shopping sites
Copy the ingredient list from the product page — Korean or English — and paste it here.
2. What it says
Your decoded label shows up here. No product to hand? Tap a sample on the left.
What the decoder knows
- 391 Korean ingredient names with their English INCI names, from the Korea Cosmetic Association dictionary — including old names and spellings still printed on packs.
- English ingredient lists too: paste one from a shopping site to see each ingredient’s Korean name — handy for finding the same thing on a Korean shelf.
- 222 label, skincare and shop words (full list in Korean label words).
- Dates such as 2028.03.15까지 and 개봉 후 12개월, sizes in ml and g, and SPF / PA ratings.
Photos are read by Tesseract, an open-source text reader, inside your browser; the first photo downloads it once (about 3 MB). Small or shiny print can be misread, so a name we matched by its closest spelling is marked ≈ — check it against the pack. An ingredient we don’t know is shown as “not in our list yet”. That doesn’t mean anything is wrong with it — use the look-up link to search the KCIA dictionary.
How to read a Korean ingredient list
Korean law requires the full ingredient list, using standard ingredient names. Ingredients are listed from the largest amount to the smallest, but anything at 1% or less, fragrances and colourants may be listed in any order, and fragrance can be written simply as 향료 — except that fragrance allergens listed by the MFDS (such as linalool, 리날룰) must be named when they exceed 0.001% in leave-on or 0.01% in rinse-off products.
Packs of 10 ml or 10 g or less, and free samples, can leave the list off. Packs over 10 and up to 50 ml (or g) may shorten it, but must still show tar colourants, gold leaf, phosphates in shampoos and rinses, AHAs, the active ingredients of functional cosmetics and ingredients with an official limit. Either way, the full list must be available — through a phone number or website on the pack, or a printed list in the shop.
Sources
- Korea Cosmetic Association — the Cosmetics Act labelling rules, including Annex 4 of the Enforcement Rule
- Enforcement Rule of the Cosmetics Act (화장품법 시행규칙), Articles 2 and 19 — in force 2 April 2026
- Korea Cosmetic Association — ingredient dictionary (대한화장품협회 성분사전)
Checked 26 October 2026. Rules change — the official texts above are the final word.