Bring medicine to Korea: 3 months' supply, not 6 months

You can bring medicine to Korea for your own use up to 6 bottles, or up to 3 months’ supply by the dosage on the pack. Inside the US$800 duty-free allowance there is no separate check for that. Three groups follow stricter rules: misuse-prone drugs, narcotic-class drugs such as most sleeping pills, and anything made from cannabis.

What medicine can you bring to Korea?

The answer depends on which of five groups the medicine falls into. This is the split Incheon Main Customs prints on its arrival guide, a page that shows no date and was read on 16 October 2026.

Gifts count as your own use. The customs page puts medicine bought as a present in the same personal-use limit as medicine you will take yourself.

Some medicine is checked even inside the limit. Customs names three cases: an ingredient listed under CITES, the endangered species convention; a product the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has refused or flagged as harmful; and outer packaging with no clear ingredient label. Keep the original box.

How much medicine can you bring to Korea: 3 months or 6?

Korea Customs prints 3 months. The arrival guide of Incheon Main Customs, the Korea Customs Service office for the port of Incheon, gives the limit as 6 bottles or 3 months’ supply by dosage and cites the Customs Act enforcement rule behind it. The Korean consulate in Osaka repeats the same rule, word for word, on a notice for air travellers edited on 3 October 2026.

The English pages a traveller finds first say something else. Can I Bring To states up to 6 months supply for personal use and calls it more generous than most countries. MileAsia states a maximum of 6 weeks of prescription medication without approval. Neither prints the 3-month figure, and the 6-month figure is not confirmed by any Korean source cited here.

One page is about over-the-counter medicine and the other about prescriptions, yet the Korean rule draws no line between the two: both fall under self-use medicine. Treat 6 bottles or 3 months as the limit, because that is the only version printed by Korea Customs and repeated by a Korean consulate.

The second gap is the allowance. Both customs and the consulate add a line that the English pages leave out: medicine is counted toward the US$800 per-person duty-free allowance, not on top of it. If you also carry shopping, add the value of the medicine to it before deciding whether you are over US$800.

Can I bring over the counter medicine to South Korea?

Yes, within the same personal-use limit of 6 bottles or 3 months’ supply. Korea Customs makes no separate category for over-the-counter medicine; it falls under self-use medicine like a prescription drug does.

The three exceptions above still apply. A pill organiser or a strip cut from its box has no ingredient label on the outer packaging, which is one of the cases customs checks even inside the allowance, so pack over-the-counter medicine in the box it was sold in.

If you run out after arriving, Korean pharmacies and convenience stores sell common remedies, and the open pharmacy page covers how to find one at night or on a holiday.

Bringing prescription medicine to Korea: when is a foreign prescription not enough?

For misuse-prone drugs, it never is. The customs rule allows these only in the quantity written on a prescription issued by a doctor in Korea, and the example the arrival guide names is alprostadil, a drug for erectile dysfunction.

Incheon Airport Customs made the rule concrete in June 2026. Medicine containing sildenafil or tadalafil is on the ministry’s misuse-prone list, and even a single bottle needs a Korean doctor’s prescription, according to Segye Ilbo and The Herald Business reporting the customs release. Clearance is then limited to the ingredients and quantity on that prescription.

The counts customs released are for international mail. Interceptions of these drugs in international mail rose 89% from the first half of 2025 to the second, and rose another 39% in the first quarter of 2026 against a year earlier. India was the origin of 99% of shipments, and 97% of the parcels were sent back because they had no Korean prescription.

For ordinary prescription medicine that is not misuse-prone or narcotic-class, the customs pages cited here ask for no paperwork within 6 bottles or 3 months. Carrying the prescription costs nothing and answers the question if an officer asks what the pills are.

Can I bring sleeping pills to Korea?

Only with approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety before you travel. Korea’s narcotics law covers most sleeping pills and sedatives, and the customs page names zolpidem, diazepam, alprazolam and lorazepam.

The ministry has taken applications online since 27 December 2024, at nedrug.mfds.go.kr, and the permit applies whatever your nationality. The Osaka consulate lists the documents:

Documents must be in Korean or English, or come with a notarised translation. Processing takes 10 working days, and the consulate tells applicants to file at least 10 days before arrival; a late or incomplete application can be refused. Counting weekends, 10 working days is two weeks , so leave at least that.

The permit has hard edges. It covers at most 90 days, matched to your trip, with up to 5 days spare for delays. Prescription drugs go in carry-on baggage only, nobody can carry them in on your behalf, and posting narcotic-class medicine to Korea is banned outright.

Customs counts 478 drugs on Korea’s narcotics list, 257 of them psychotropics. That list, rather than what your home pharmacy calls a controlled drug, decides whether you need a permit, and the ministry’s narcotics policy division answers on 043-719-2813. Cannabis needs no checking: every cannabis product, CBD oil and cannabis vape cartridges included, is banned and prosecuted.

When does medication go on the South Korea customs declaration?

When it takes you over the US$800 allowance, or when it is psychotropic or misuse-prone. The Korea Customs Service lists narcotics, psychotropic medicine and misuse-prone medicine among the goods to declare, alongside anything over the allowance.

Declaring cuts the tax by 30%, and not declaring costs a penalty of 40% of the tax due, or 60% for a repeat. The customs declaration page covers the app, the web form and the cap on that reduction.

Medicine over the allowance for your own treatment has a separate route. Customs says the city or provincial governor can recommend an exemption from the requirement check, based on a diagnosis from the head of a public health centre or a hospital, and that only a Korean doctor’s opinion is accepted. Requests go to each city or province’s health policy division; in Seoul the number customs gives is 02-2133-7535.

What is not checked here

The personal-use limits, the US$800 rule and the narcotics list come from Incheon Main Customs’ arrival guide, which shows no date and was read on 16 October 2026. The Osaka consulate notice says it reflects the rule as of January 2025 and was last edited on 3 October 2026, so treat its permit details as a January 2025 reading that a consulate still stands behind.

Not checked: individual cold, allergy and pain-relief ingredients against the ministry’s lists, so look up the ingredient rather than the brand. The exact text of the customs notice that sets the 6-bottle rule was not read, only the customs pages that summarise it. Whether every country issues the export approval the ministry asks for was not checked, and a traveller whose government does not should ask the ministry before booking.

Vapes and cigarettes follow their own allowance, covered on the vape and cigarette page. If customs treated your medicine differently from this page, tell me and the page will say so with the date.