88.7% of K-food export growth comes from processed foods… Reaching $17 billion by 2030 requires doubling growth

An assessment has found that as the driving force behind K-food exports over the past 10 years has been concentrated in processed foods, including instant noodles, the growth structure by item and market itself must change if the government is to achieve $17 billion in the agri-food sector within its 2030 K-Food+ target of $21 billion. To reach the target from $10.41 billion in exports in 2025 (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs), an average annual growth rate of 10.7% is needed, about twice the growth rate of the past 10 years (5.3%).

Associate Research Fellow Jung Dae-hee of the Korea Rural Economic Institute made the remarks on August 20 while presenting on “Changes in the K-food export structure and export strategies in the AI era” at the Korean Association of Agricultural and Food Policy 2026 Summer Academic Conference held at Hotel Arina in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province. The conference, hosted by the Korean Association of Agricultural and Food Policy and Pusan National University under the theme “K-food in the world, opening the future with AI,” was held for two days through the 21st.

K-food growth trend continues… Up 4.7% in the first half of 2026 as well
K-food exports grew at an average annual rate of 5.3% over the past 10 years, exceeding the growth rate of the country’s total exports (3.0%). Exports in the first half of 2026 also reached $5.38 billion, up 5.0% from the same period a year earlier. This performance was achieved amid external uncertainties including the prolonged Russia-Ukraine war, additional U.S. tariff measures and stronger protectionism, logistics disruptions caused by the U.S.-Iran war, and slowing global growth.

The center of gravity of growth has tilted toward processed foods. While 88.7% of the export increase over the past 10 years came from processed foods, the share of exports compared with domestic production and sales remained at only 2~6%. This is why linking export growth to growth in agriculture and the food industry has been identified as a key task.

Concentration by item also increased. The export share of the top 10 items rose from 48.0% to 52.3%, up 4.3 percentage points. Instant noodles climbed from 4th place in 2015 ($219 million) to 1st place in 2025 ($1.521 billion), accounting for 31.4% of the increase in agri-food exports over 10 years.

In the 11th to 20th ranks, kimchi rose from 19th to 12th, ice cream jumped from 37th to 17th, and new items such as pet food (13th) and alcoholic beverages (19th) entered the list. This signals the growing importance of refrigerated and frozen distribution capabilities. By contrast, paprika fell from 14th to 49th, and in 2025 no fresh agricultural products remained within the top 20.
 

U.S. from $630 million to $1.8 billion; Europe and CIS shift to double-digit growth
In markets, the structure centered on the United States, China, and Japan continued. The export share of the three countries, which was 46.6% in 2015, fell by 0.8 percentage points to 45.8% in 2025.

Among them, growth in the U.S. market stood out. Exports to the United States increased from $630 million to $1.8 billion, growing at an average annual rate of 11.1%, and accounted for 28.4% of the total increase. The United States became the largest export market for Korean agri-food products. Although exports to Japan (average annual 1.1%) and China (4.2%) increased, their shares declined as they fell short of the overall average growth rate (5.3%).

By region, Europe’s average annual growth rate turned from -2.0% in 2016~2020 to 14.4% in 2021~2025, while the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States, an association of countries that became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union) reversed from 1.7% to 10.9%. The Middle East (-8.7%→9.8%) and South America (-2.3%→6.9%) also returned to recovery. ASEAN has continued to grow, but its pace slowed sharply from 7.7% to 1.4%.

The share of other markets outside the top 10 countries expanded from 25.0% to 29.6%, up 4.6 percentage points. This was the result of the Netherlands, Thailand, Canada, and Malaysia growing into markets worth more than $200 million, while the United Kingdom, Mongolia, Germany, and others grew by an average of more than 10% annually.
 

AI as decision-making infrastructure that makes exploration, verification, and learning constant
Associate Research Fellow Jung proposed differentiating approaches by market: Europe and the CIS as “preemption and expansion,” the United States as “expansion of the growth axis,” China, Japan, and ASEAN as “rebuilding the growth axis,” and the Middle East and South America as “selective experimentation.” He also emphasized that item strategies should be pursued in parallel: popularization (representative K-food), diversification (follow-up growth items by market), and premiumization (fresh products and items linked to domestic agriculture).

He defined AI not as a tool but as decision-making infrastructure. The idea is to expand data that had centered on export performance to consumption, distribution, regulation, and logistics; to shift from regular and ex-post analysis to constant monitoring; and to subdivide the unit of analysis from national averages into “country×item×channel.” Through this, the plan is to create a circular structure of market and item exploration→marketability verification→execution and learning.

As implementation tasks, he presented four areas: △data-based advancement △building AI analysis infrastructure △expert personnel and verification systems △field linkage and performance feedback. Associate Research Fellow Jung emphasized, “The public sector should provide a common foundation that is difficult for individual companies to build and should support field verification and performance feedback.”

He continued, “The effectiveness of an AI-based export strategy ultimately depends on how data and infrastructure, expert personnel, and the field are connected,” and argued, “A structure must be created in which analysis results lead to actual export performance and that performance is fed back into data, so that the growth potential, diversity, and added value of K-food exports can be raised together.”