South Korea Online Food Safety Upgrade – Key Summary
- South Korea’s rapid growth in online grocery and ‘dawn delivery’ services has raised new food safety risks due to overnight handling of fresh items.
- The MFDS is tightening regulations for contactless retail, focusing on stricter inspection of online food and agricultural products.
- Authorities will increase monitoring of refrigeration and freezing conditions during overnight storage and transport.
- Meal kits, which are increasingly popular among single‑person and dual‑income households, will face expanded safety inspections.
- MFDS plans to boost e-commerce food inspections by 67%, from 1,500 samples in 2025 to more than 2,500 in 2026.
- Egg safety management will shift upstream to laying hen farms.
Online grocery ordering and delivery has gained significant traction since consumers were forcibly exposed to the benefits and convenience of these systems during the pandemic, and nowhere has this been more obvious than in Asia.
Delivery timelines such as ‘next-day delivery’ and ‘Two-day delivery’ are common in many markets for a premium – but in South Korea one of the most popular services to have emerged is ‘Dawn delivery’, where groceries are processed and delivered overnight ready for consumer use first thing in the morning.
The ‘Dawn delivery’ system
South Korean platforms such as Coupang offer these systems to enhance consumer convenience, where groceries are placed into insulated as and left by delivery workers on consumer doorsteps early in the morning. The bag is reusable and will be re-collected during the consumer’s next order.
These systems are generally offered to consumers who have purchased premium memberships. The groceries are not limited to fresh produce, but any items purchased on the platform.
Unfortunately, this system has also led to the emergence of new food safety concerns among consumers and the food sector, given the fact that many groceries tend to be fresh produce prone to spoilage if not refrigerated promptly.
This has compelled the local Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) to revise current food safety regulations covering contactless retail sales, particularly as it is already dealing with multiple other concerns such as rising fake food complaints and other food safety breaches.
“MFDS has reflected on the current growing culture of contactless online purchasing, and we have decided to strengthen the collection and inspection of all online food and agriculture products, including those delivered via dawn delivery,” MFDS Minister Oh-Yoo Kyung said via a formal statement.
“This will include the establishment of a new inspection system that utilises modern AI technology to enhance the management and safety of products that carry potential food poisoning risks, such as eggs and raw meat.”
The new system was launched as part of South Korea’s 2026 Agriculture, Livestock and Fishery Product Safety Management plan, the ministry’s new national food safety strategy for the year.
AI technologies will be used to develop two systems: A pre-emptive safety system to enhance the accuracy and predictability of food safety; and a meat inspection system.
The first will use AI to analyse big data such as pesticide residue test results and weather observation data, making predictions about products with high risk of non-conformance and selecting priority items for collection.
The meat system will be established in stages until 2030, with 2026 dedicated to creating a foreign body detector which will improve the detection rate and accuracy of foreign substances such as needles, pus, bone fragments or plastic in beef and pork.
“There is a strong increase in online purchasing, so we will also be working on improving all relevant collection and inspection systems accordingly. This will include continuous monitoring of the refrigeration and freezing of products during storage and transportation phases, especially when delivered overnight,” she added.
“South Korea is also seeing a rise in single-person and dual-income households, which is leading to the rise of home meal kits [delivered to the home]. Similarly, MFDS will also be inspecting these to ensure all products are safe for consumption.”
Many common meal kit items contain eggs and meat, such as bulgogi (marinated meat), gomtang (beef soup), ham, sausages and bibimbap (mixed rice).
MFDS data indicates that almost 1,500 samples of food products sold via e-commerce were collected and inspected in 2025. This is expected to be increased by 67% to over 2,500 items this year.
Special care for eggs
Salmonella has long been one of the country’s top public health issues, being a major cause of annual food poisoning outbreaks over the past few years.
Many of these cases have been linked to egg safety management, and MFDS has now opted to upgrade national management of the egg sector by shifting its focus higher up the supply chain.
“We will transition from an egg-focused inspection system to one that also investigates and improves salmonella contamination levels at laying hen farms,” she said.
“MFDS will also double the number of egg samples for salmonella testing from 20 to 40and accelerate the development of a rapid testing kit for farmers and operators to quickly [detect and halt] the distribution of any salmonella-contaminated eggs.”
Despite previous efforts, South Korea’s salmonella-related food poisoning cases have been on the rise since 2020.
Out of 203 salmonella food poisoning cases over the past five years, some 33% (66 cases) have been linked to eggs.
