Korean Hair Loss Shampoo: Two Recipes, One 24-Week Test
Korean hair loss shampoo is a regulated product category in Korea. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (식품의약품안전처, MFDS) maintains a list of "functional cosmetics" (기능성화장품), and ChemLinked's summary of that regulation gives category 8 as "Cosmetics that help alleviate hair loss symptoms. Products that only physically thicken the appearance of hair (e.g., hair coating products) are excluded." The category is recent. The US International Trade Administration's market note on Korean hair loss products, published September 20, 2024, says that "In 2017, the MFDS reclassified hair loss alleviation products from quasi-drugs to functional cosmetics."
This is for whoever reads the back of the bottle before the ad copy: thinning at the part line, an oily scalp through a humid summer, a cart sitting open at a Korean retailer. Everything below is as of September 16, 2026 (KST).
The two recipes that skip the trial
In October 2020 MFDS issued 공고 제2020-435호, a draft amendment to the Regulation on the Examination of Functional Cosmetics. One stated purpose was widening 심사자료의 면제 범위, the range of review data a company does not have to submit. I read the notice text as circulated to the WTO; it adds item 7 to Annex 4, covering "탈모 증상의 완화에 도움을 주는 화장품의 성분 및 함량," with two combinations:
- dexpanthenol 0.2%, salicylic acid 0.25%, L-menthol 0.3%
- niacinamide 0.3%, dexpanthenol 0.5%, biotin 0.06%, zinc pyrithione solution (50%) 2.0%
Added up, the first row's listed actives come to 0.75% of the formula. The second comes to 2.86%, of which 2.0 points is a solution that is itself half zinc pyrithione. That arithmetic is mine, not the notice's, and the notice sets no minimum for anything else in the bottle.
Item 7 also limits the dosage form to 액제, 로션제, 크림제 (solution, lotion, cream) and fixes the efficacy statement at a single sentence: 탈모 증상의 완화에 도움을 준다. Helps relieve the symptoms of hair loss. It writes the usage line too. For the second combination the text reads, in my translation, take an appropriate amount on wet hair and massage it into hair and scalp, then with the lather in place "wait about 3 minutes, then rinse thoroughly with water." The three-minute wait is the notice's instruction for that formula. Cosmorning reported the exemption on October 7, 2020 with the same two combinations, and ChemLinked's page, updated August 18, 2026, still points to Annex 4 as the place the exemptions live. What I could not open is the consolidated regulation itself. Its current version is 고시 제2025-88호, in force since December 16, 2025, and the Annex 4 text would not load for me, so whether item 7 was adopted exactly as drafted and still reads that way today is something I did not verify.
What the other route measures
A formula that does not match either combination has to bring human data instead. The MFDS evaluation institute's cosmetics review division published a guideline for that, 탈모 증상 완화에 도움을 주는 화장품의 인체적용시험 가이드라인, registered August 2, 2018 and revised since.
Kyunghyang Shinmun's August 18, 2022 column on that guideline describes the design: 24 weeks, subjects aged 18 to 54 with male- or female-pattern hair loss, and three assessment items, whether hair at the crown became fuller, whether the subject believes shed hair decreased, and whether the front hairline improved, each scored from −3 (much worse) to +3 (much better). The columnist's complaint is that this is a quasi-drug standard applied to shampoo.
Two bottles can therefore carry the same functional wording after two very different processes. My read is that 기능성 on a hair product is a statement about the recipe first, and about that particular product's measured results only sometimes. I could not find, in the notice text or on the guideline's listing page, any requirement that a label say which of the two routes a given product took.
The words Korean regulators strike
On March 18, 2024 the Korean government's policy briefing site reported an MFDS sweep of hair-loss-related food and medical-product listings that blocked 622 online postings. For cosmetics the expressions named as off-limits are 탈모 치료 (hair loss treatment), 탈모 예방 (prevention), 모발 증가 (increase in hair), 양모, and 두피염증 완화 (relief of scalp inflammation). On the functional products themselves the briefing says "기능성화장품이라도 탈모 증상을 완화할 뿐, '치료' 효과나 머리카락을 자라게 하는 '양모·발모·육모' 등은 검증된 바 없으므로": a functional cosmetic only relieves the symptoms of hair loss, and treatment effects and the hair-growing claims are not verified.
The 53-shampoo ad survey
In 2022 the civic group 소비자주권시민회의 read the online advertising for 53 hair-loss functional shampoos sold through Korean online malls. Economist Korea's October 1, 2022 report says all 53 were found to carry false or exaggerated claims: 25 products (47%) claimed a drop in the shed-hair count, and 20 (38%) used terms such as 증모, 발모, 양모 and 모발성장. Herald Business covered the same survey on September 19, 2022, and adds that 14 products (26%) printed 탈모방지 or 탈모예방. Seven companies caught between June and September 2022 each drew a three-month advertising suspension, per the Economist Korea report.
A February 2026 SEN TV feature revisits the problem and quotes two dermatologists. Kim Do-young, a dermatology professor at Severance Hospital, says cleansing shampoos mostly produce "머리카락의 질감이 개선되는 정도의 효과뿐," an effect at the level of hair texture. Kim Beom-jun, a dermatology professor at Chung-Ang University, says "환자가 샴푸만 믿고 버티는 사이 치료 적기를 놓칠 수 있다," that a patient holding out on shampoo alone can miss the window for treatment. Those are the outlet's quotes and my translations of them.
Safety and efficacy are separate questions
There is Korean lab data on the safety half. 대전충남소비자연맹 published a comparison on May 20, 2021, carried on the government's 소비자24 portal, covering 10 functional hair-loss shampoos on sale at the time, among them 네이처리퍼블릭 블랙빈 안티 헤어로스, 닥터포헤어 폴리젠 플러스, 려 자양윤모, 리엔 닥터그루트 지성두피용 and 아모스프로페셔널 녹차실감. It tested pH, heavy metals, formaldehyde, methanol and 1,4-dioxane, three phthalates, microbes, and preservatives. The finding was "전 제품이 기준에 적합했다," all products met the standards, with labelling compliant as well.
Clean on contaminants, for those ten, five years ago. It says nothing about whether any of them moved a hair count.
For scale, the ITA note projects Korean hair loss care growing from USD 245 million in 2020 to USD 400 million by 2025.
If you have one of these bottles, look for those two combinations at those exact percentages in the ingredient list and tell me in the comments which one you found. I would also like to know whether the English listing you bought from said anything the Korean label is not allowed to say. The Olive Young Global and YesStyle product pages both refused my fetches today, so I could not check their English copy myself.
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