South Korea’s exports of food and agriculture-related products, referred to as “K-food Plus”, hit a record annual high of US$13.62 billion in 2025.
The country’s Agriculture Ministry also reported on Monday that Korean ramyeon or instant noodles posted the largest export gains, surpassing US$1.5 billion.
The surge came amid the runaway success of K-pop Demon Hunters, which ended 2025 as the most-watched film ever for the Netflix streaming platform.
K-ramyeon, the flagship item of K-food that appears in the Netflix animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters and has even been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), has surpassed the annual export milestone of $1.5 billion for the first time.
According to statistics from the Korea Customs Service (KCS) released on the 11th, South Korea’s instant noodle exports last year jumped 21.8% from a year earlier to a provisional record high of $1.521 billion, or roughly 2.2 trillion won.
As recently as 2023, when exports stood at $952 million, instant noodle shipments had not yet reached the $1 billion mark. In just two years, however, they have grown by more than $500 million, making instant noodles a key driver of K-food exports.
Compared with 2022, when exports totaled $765 million, the value of Korean instant noodle exports has doubled in three years. Since 2015, when exports were $219 million, the figure has increased sevenfold over the past decade.
Unlike Samyang Foods, which manufactures all of its Hot Chicken Flavor Ramen domestically for export, Nongshim also operates plants in the United States of America (U.S.) and China. Taking that into account, the total overseas sales of Korean instant noodles are believed to be far higher than the export figures alone suggest.
Exports of Korean-made instant noodles have risen for 11 consecutive years since 2014. In particular, over the five years since 2021, the average annual growth rate of instant noodle exports has reached 23%.
Buoyed by the global popularity of K-pop, K-Drama and other pillars of K-Culture, K-ramyeon has steadily gained status overseas. The University of Oxford’s Oxford English Dictionary (OED) recently added the word “ramyeon” as a new entry, alongside the already listed Japanese term “Ramen.”
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