Korean Foam Cleanser pH: 10 Measured, Only 3 Below 7.5
Korea's Consumer Agency sent ten foam cleansers sold in Korea to a lab and printed the measured pH of every one. Round Lab's 1025 Dokdo Cleanser came back at 5.7. Dr.G's Green Deep Pore Clear Foam came back at 6.0. The remaining eight ran from 7.2 up to 10.0.
If you're somewhere between 25 and 40 with combination or oily-but-dehydrated skin in a humid city, and you switched to Korean cleansers partly because a forum thread told you they run gentler and lower pH than Western foaming washes, those are the numbers worth sitting with for a minute. Eight of the ten products in the panel are Korean brands. Six of those eight measured between 9.4 and 10.0.
What the agency put in the lab
The report is 비교공감 제2024-20호, published 19 November 2024 by the Korea Consumer Agency, on the government's Consumer24 portal. It covers cleansing power against two soils (cleansing oil and sunscreen), a user panel for feel and rinse-off, pH, safety testing for preservatives and heavy metals, and packaging recyclability. Ten products in all.
Here is the pH column, sorted low to high, with the Korean product names as they appear in the report. English product names are the brand's own for Round Lab and ma:nyo, whose pages I opened, and my translation of the report's Korean for the rest.
| Product | Measured pH |
|---|---|
| Round Lab 1025 Dokdo Cleanser (라운드랩 1025 독도 클렌저) | 5.7 |
| Dr.G Green Deep Pore Clear Foam (닥터지 그린 딥 포어 클리어 폼) | 6.0 |
| Neutrogena Deep Clean Gentle Foaming Cleanser (뉴트로지나 딥클린 젠틀 포밍 클렌저) | 7.2 |
| AHC Prep Reset Cleansing Foam (에이에이치씨 프렙 리셋 클렌징 폼) | 9.4 |
| Nature Republic Snail Solution Foam Cleanser (네이처리퍼블릭 스네일 솔루션 폼 클렌저) | 9.5 |
| innisfree Volcanic BHA Pore Cleansing Foam (이니스프리 화산송이 바하 모공 클렌징 폼) | 9.6 |
| ma:nyo Deep Pore Cleansing Soda Foam (마녀공장 딥 포어 클렌징 소다폼) | 9.7 |
| The Face Shop Jeju Volcanic Anti-Dust Pore Cleansing Foam (더페이스샵 제주 화산토 안티더스트 모공 클렌징 폼) | 9.9 |
| Senka Perfect Whip Facial Wash A (센카 퍼펙트휩 페이셜 워시 A) | 9.9 |
| Happy Bath Micro Micellar Deep Cleansing Foam (해피바스 마이크로 미셀라 딥 클렌징 폼) | 10.0 |
Neutrogena and Senka are the two non-Korean brands in the group, at 7.2 and 9.9.
No pH rule covers anything you rinse off
The report adds a one-line note to the pH numbers. In translation it reads, "Foam cleansers are rinsed off with water right after use, so there is no separate pH safety standard." (my translation)
Korean cosmetics law does carry a pH rule. 화장품 안전기준 등에 관한 규정 (Regulation on Safety Standards for Cosmetics), Article 6(6) sets a pH range of 3.0 to 9.0, and the scope is narrow. It applies to liquid products in the form of a lotion, cream or similar, within six named categories: infant and child products (excluding infant shampoo, conditioner, body wash and bath products), eye makeup, colour makeup, hair products (excluding shampoo and conditioner), shaving products (excluding shaving cream and foam), and basic skincare (excluding makeup removers). The same clause then excludes "products that do not contain water and products that are washed off with water immediately after use."
A foam cleanser is washed off immediately after use. A 10.0 reading breaks nothing.
I could not get the National Law Information Center's own page for this regulation to render the article text today, so what you see quoted above is the text as posted on the U-LEX law database, linked in the paragraph before.
The one label claim that checked out
Round Lab's own product page describes the 1025 Dokdo Cleanser as a "slightly acidic cleanser (pH 5.0–6.0)", and lists the 150 ml size at $15.00, down from $17.00, as of 15 September 2026. The Consumer Agency's lab measured 5.7. A brand claim landed inside its own stated range and somebody other than the brand checked it, which happens less often in this category than you'd hope.
The comparison I expected to find on the other end never materialised. I opened ma:nyo's official US page for the Deep Pore Cleansing Soda Foam, the product the agency measured at 9.7, and there is no pH figure anywhere on it. A "pH 7–8" line for this product turns up in search summaries, so I opened Ulta's listing to see where it came from, and no pH claim appears there either. Nobody is promising a number, so nobody is breaking one.
COSRX's Low pH Good Morning Gel Cleanser, the product that comes up in half the Reddit threads about cleanser pH, was not in this panel at all.
Only half did well against sunscreen
Every one of the ten scored the top rating against cleansing oil. Against sunscreen, five products earned the second-tier rating and five earned the third: ma:nyo, Senka, AHC, innisfree and Happy Bath in the better group, the other five behind them.
Newsis (뉴시스) reported the conclusion the same day the report came out: "When cleansing with a foam cleanser alone, some sunscreen ingredients remained on the skin and could cause skin trouble, so careful cleansing such as double cleansing was needed." (my translation)
Read the two tables next to each other and you'll notice the five that did better against sunscreen are all in the 9.4-and-above group. The report does not claim the pH caused that, and neither will I, because nothing in it links the two measurements.
What this report does not tell you
It measured pH. It did not measure what any of these products did to anyone's skin barrier, and there was no follow-up period. All ten passed the preservative, heavy metal and allergen-labelling checks. Those are safety results; nothing in them speaks to how a cleanser feels on your face an hour later.
The user panel rated overall satisfaction between 3.1 and 3.8, per Cosin Korea (코스인코리아)'s write-up. ma:nyo took the top score there, 4.2 on rinse feel and 3.8 overall, while also sitting at 9.7 on the pH table. Prices ran from 667 to 1,333 won per 10 ml as of November 2024, a two-fold spread, with Nature Republic cheapest and ma:nyo dearest.
The pH column appears in the Consumer24 report itself. Of the two Korean news write-ups of this report I opened today, neither printed the pH figures, and the Consumer Agency's own site returned a 503 error when I tried it. A single accessible table is thinner sourcing than I'd like for ten numbers, so that is what you're weighing when you read them.
These are 2024 formulas and I have not checked whether any of the ten has been reformulated since. If you use one of them and your tube carries a recent batch code, I'd like to know whether the ingredient list still matches. Has any cleanser you own ever printed its pH on the tube?
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