Incheon beauty and healthcare export fair draws record results with 37 overseas buyers

Domestic companies and overseas buyers hold export consultations at the 2026 Beauty & Healthcare Show Export Consultation Fair, held over two days starting Thursday at Songdo Convensia in Incheon. [KOTRA]

The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said Monday that the B2B export consultation fair held alongside the 2026 Beauty & Healthcare Show drew 225 domestic and foreign companies and achieved record results.

The 2026 Beauty & Healthcare Show Export Consultation Fair, co-hosted by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and Incheon Metropolitan City and jointly organized by KOTRA and the Incheon Tourism Organization, held its fourth edition with 188 domestic and 37 overseas companies participating — the largest turnout in the event's history. The fair ran for two days starting Thursday at Songdo Convensia in Incheon.

The exhibition was designed to build synergies between Incheon's core cosmetics industry and its pharmaceutical and healthcare infrastructure, with the goal of positioning the city as a global hub for the beauty and healthcare sector in line with the government's regional growth strategy.

Korean cosmetics have been making a strong mark in global markets, with exports surpassing $7 billion in the first half of this year — a 27 percent increase from the same period last year. The top three export destinations were the United States ($1.45 billion), China ($1.01 billion) and Japan ($580 million).

"In an effort to diversify beauty export markets, we focused on attracting buyers from emerging markets, and as a result, Global South buyers accounted for half of all participating overseas buyers — 18 out of 37 companies," a KOTRA official said.

A representative of Skin9Cosmetic, an Incheon-based company that signed a $200,000 MOU with a Nigerian buyer that day, said Africa is a particularly difficult market for small and medium-sized enterprises to break into due to limited information and networks. "Thanks to KOTRA's overseas buyer matching support, we were able to hold in-depth consultations with genuine local buyers in Africa — contacts that would have been very hard to reach on our own — and gain real insight into what the market actually needs," the representative said.

A mobile KOTRA consulting session — a program designed to help exporters resolve on-site challenges — is underway at the 2026 Beauty & Healthcare Show Export Consultation Fair, held over two days starting Thursday at Songdo Convensia in Incheon. [KOTRA]

A total of 188 small and medium-sized enterprises took part in the fair, generating 541 export consultations over the two days — a significant increase from the 155 domestic companies that participated last year. On-site export consultation value reached $39 million, up 77 percent from the previous year and exceeding the original target of $25 million by more than 58 percent.

At the entrance to the consultation hall, KOTRA also ran its mobile consulting program, which helps exporters resolve on-site challenges. Specialist advisers in areas including overseas certification, trade and tariffs, intellectual property and logistics provided one-on-one consultations to support deal-making on the floor.

Kim Sam-su, head of KOTRA's Incheon regional office, said Incheon — home to an international airport and seaport — serves as the gateway to the greater Seoul metropolitan area and offers unmatched access to global buyers and consumers in the beauty and healthcare sector. "We will do our utmost to provide follow-up support so that this export consultation fair delivers diversification results in both markets and product categories by combining K-beauty with medical services," Kim said.

Meanwhile, KOTRA has also been actively working to attract overseas talent in key industries including semiconductors, defense and AI. On Tuesday (local time), KOTRA co-hosted an overseas talent recruitment road show in Toulouse, France, together with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity.

The road show was held in conjunction with the 2026 Korean-European Science and Technology Conference (EKC), the largest academic gathering of Korean scientists and engineers in Europe. A total of 28 institutions participated, including six domestic companies — Samsung Electronics, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, Posco Holdings' Future Technology Research Institute and LIG Defence & Aerospace among them — as well as 14 government-funded research institutes including the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, and three universities including Pohang University of Science and Technology. About 100 European researchers and Korean scientists attended on site.

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