At two in the morning, Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market is the loudest place in Seoul. Auctioneers chant over polystyrene crates. Buyers flick hand signals nobody outside the trade can read. Meanwhile, forklifts thread between puddles of melting ice, and the air smells of brine and diesel.
It looks like abundance. However, walk the aisles and read the labels, and a different story appears. That pollock came from Russia. The squid is Chinese. Those salmon fillets flew in from Norway, and the shrimp arrived from Vietnam.
This is the central paradox of the Korea seafood industry. Koreans eat more fish per person than almost anyone on earth. Yet the country cannot catch or farm enough to feed itself, and the gap keeps widening. In 2024 alone, Korea imported roughly $2.5 billion more seafood than it sold abroad.
For foreign exporters, that gap is an opportunity worth understanding. For investors, it explains a scramble of capital into land-based fish farms. And for anyone who simply likes Korean food, it explains why your favorite dish quietly costs more every year.
The Numbers That Define the Korea Seafood Industry
Start with appetite, because appetite drives everything else here.
Koreans consume somewhere around 60 kilograms of seafood per person annually. The global average, by comparison, sits near 20 kilograms. Depending on the measurement method, Korea ranks first, second, or third worldwide, usually trading places with Iceland, the Maldives, and Japan. In short, this is one of the most fish-dependent food cultures on the planet.
Now look at supply. According to figures presented at the 2026 maritime and fisheries outlook conference, Korea produced about 3.94 million tons of seafood in 2025, up 1.6 percent year on year. That sounds healthy. Nevertheless, growth came almost entirely from farmed seaweed rather than from fish.
The self-sufficiency number tells the real story. For fish and shellfish specifically, Korea covered roughly 57 percent of its own consumption as of 2023. Seaweed is the exception, since the country grows far more than it eats. Everything else must be bought abroad.
Consequently, Korea imports seafood from about 100 countries. Total imports reached $5.52 billion in 2024, whereas seafood exports that year came to $3.04 billion. The arithmetic is unforgiving. Exports then climbed to a record $3.33 billion in 2025, yet the Korean seafood market still runs a structural deficit measured in billions.
Why the Korean Fisheries Sector Buys From 100 Countries
So where does all that imported fish come from? The answer is less romantic than the auction floor suggests.
Russia has been the single largest supplier in most recent years, followed closely by China. Vietnam, Norway, and the United States round out the top five. Notably, the American share hovers near 3.4 percent, which makes the US roughly the fifth or sixth largest exporter into the country.
The species list explains the geography. Frozen Alaska pollock leads imports by both value and volume, because pollock is the backbone of Korean comfort food. Think of the dried pollock in haejangguk, the hangover soup, or the roe used in countless side dishes. Mackerel follows, then pollock roe, large yellow croaker, monkfish, and salmon.
Some of those names should surprise you. Mackerel, croaker, and monkfish were all abundant local catches within living memory. Today, restaurants serving Korean braised monkfish often work with imported fish, because domestic landings can no longer meet demand at a workable price.
Trade agreements accelerated the shift. Korea has signed FTAs with several major seafood-producing nations over the past decade. As a result, tariff walls came down while domestic catches were falling, and importers had every incentive to look outward.
The Squid That Vanished From Korean Waters
If you want one statistic that explains the Korea seafood industry, use this one.
In 2000, Korean vessels landed roughly 220,000 tons of squid. By 2023, the figure had fallen to about 20,000 tons. That is a decline of roughly 90 percent in a single generation.
On the east coast, the collapse was even starker. Landings there dropped from 8,652 tons in 2020 to just 852 tons in 2024. Squid boats that once lit the horizon like a floating city now sit tied up in harbor for much of the season.
<!– IMAGE 4 (PHOTO): Korean fishing boats / squid jigging vessels in harbour –>
Alaska pollock offers the more extreme case. Once the defining fish of the East Sea, it has not been commercially caught in Korean waters since around 2007. An entire national cuisine now runs on Russian imports.
The cause is not mysterious. Sea surface temperatures around the Korean peninsula rose 1.44 degrees Celsius between 1968 and 2023, according to national fisheries research. The global average over the same period was about 0.7 degrees. In other words, Korean waters warmed at double the world rate. The East Sea warmed fastest of all, at roughly 1.9 degrees.
Warm water does not merely make fish uncomfortable. Instead, it moves spawning grounds, shifts migration routes, and rewires entire food chains. Cold-water species retreat north toward Russian and Japanese waters. Meanwhile, subtropical species drift up from the south, though rarely in commercially useful quantities.
Something does arrive to replace the departed species. Yellowtail, Spanish mackerel, and various subtropical fish now appear in Korean nets with growing frequency. Unfortunately, substitution is not simple. Korean cuisine was built around specific fish with specific textures, and the processing industry was built around them too. A cannery tooled for one species cannot pivot overnight, nor can a restaurant reprint a menu that customers have trusted for decades.
Aquaculture suffers too. Over the fourteen years to 2024, abnormal water temperatures accounted for 79 percent of all natural-disaster damage to Korean fish farms. Heat waves kill farmed fish in dense coastal pens, and cold snaps do the rest.
What the Korea Seafood Industry Actually Sells Abroad
Given all that, the export side looks surprisingly strong. Yet it is strong in a narrow way.
Seafood exports reached $3.33 billion in 2025, a 9.7 percent increase and an all-time high, according to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. One product did most of the lifting. Dried seaweed, called gim, brought in about $1.13 billion on its own.
That single item accounts for roughly one third of all Korean seafood export revenue. Koreans have started calling gim the “black semiconductor,” half in jest. Nevertheless, the nickname captures something real, since Korea dominates global supply. Exports crossed the billion-dollar line in late 2025, several years ahead of the government’s own target.
We covered that boom in depth in our look at K-food exports in 2026. Here, the relevant point is different. Gim is a farmed crop, not a wild catch. Consequently, Korea’s export success comes from agriculture at sea rather than from fishing.
Beyond seaweed, the list thins out fast. Toothfish exports reached about $80 million in 2025, flounder around $60 million, and crabmeat roughly $30 million. Tuna has historically been the largest non-seaweed earner, bringing in $589 million in 2024. Japan remains the top destination overall, followed by China and the United States.
Notice the pattern. Korea exports either farmed products or fish caught thousands of kilometers away. Very little of it comes from the seas immediately surrounding the peninsula.
Dongwon and the Distant-Water Empire
Which brings us to the most globally significant Korean seafood company, and one most foreigners have eaten from without knowing it.
Dongwon Industries began in 1969 as a deep-sea fishing venture. Today it operates around 40 vessels, including one of the world’s largest tuna purse seine fleets. Its domestic arm controls roughly three quarters of Korea’s canned tuna market.
Then came 2008, when Dongwon bought StarKist from Del Monte. If you live in the United States, that name needs no introduction. Charlie the Tuna has been an American advertising fixture since 1961, and the brand is now Korean-owned.
The scale is substantial. Dongwon Group posted 2.36 trillion won in sales in the second quarter of 2025 alone, up 10.1 percent year on year, with profit rising nearly 58 percent. The group has also expanded into logistics, packaging, and cold chain, following the classic Korean conglomerate playbook.
Distant-water fishing carries risks that coastal fishing does not, however. Fleets age, fuel costs swing, and international quota politics can close a fishing ground overnight. In response, the fisheries ministry now offers interest-free loans covering up to half the construction cost of replacement vessels, repayable over fifteen years, as reported by Undercurrent News.
Diversification has become the other defense. Dongwon also harvests Antarctic krill, runs cold-storage operations, and owns a seafood business in Senegal. Certification has become part of the strategy as well, since the company pursued Marine Stewardship Council approval for its tuna fishing. For much of the Korea seafood industry, sustainability credentials now function as market access rather than as public relations, because European and American buyers increasingly demand them.
There is a labor dimension too, and it is uncomfortable. Distant-water and coastal vessels alike depend heavily on migrant crew, mostly from Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Korean workers largely avoid the sector, which is widely described as dirty, dangerous, and difficult. Most migrant fishers enter on the E-10 coastal crew visa, a route documented in reporting from Korean fishing villages. International labor groups have repeatedly pressed Seoul for stronger protections at sea.
Who Really Profits in the Korean Seafood Market
Follow the money and an awkward answer emerges. The people catching the fish are rarely the people making the margin.
Consider the structure. Wholesalers buy in bulk at auction houses like Noryangjin in Seoul and Jagalchi in Busan, then distribute to retailers, restaurants, and processors. Importers, meanwhile, source directly from a hundred countries. Both groups can arbitrage between domestic scarcity and global supply.
Fishers cannot. A coastal captain faces rising fuel costs, shrinking catches, tightening total-allowable-catch quotas, and a crew he struggles to hire. Furthermore, he sells into a price system he does not control.
Quota policy adds another squeeze. Korea manages many commercial species through a total allowable catch system, and it negotiates fishing access with Japan and China across overlapping waters. Those agreements protect stocks over the long run. In the short run, though, they cap what an individual boat can legally land in a bad year.
Processors occupy the sweet spot. Korea produced well over a million tons of processed seafood in recent years, and demand for convenience products keeps climbing. Ready-to-eat seafood kits solve two problems at once for Korean households: they remove the smell, and they remove the skill requirement. The government has projected that seafood home-meal-replacement sales will grow around 14 percent annually through 2030.
That trend fits neatly with shifts we have tracked elsewhere, including the rise of the Korea solo economy and the vast reach of the convenience store sector. Single-person households do not braise whole fish. Instead, they buy pouches, kits, and frozen portions.
Retail consumers pay for all of it. Prices for staples have climbed steadily, and gim illustrates the squeeze perfectly. A single sheet cost around 100 won in 2024. By early 2026, the price had passed 150 won, with premium grades reaching 350 won. Export success, ironically, made a national staple more expensive at home.
The Aquaculture Pivot Reshaping Korean Fisheries
Faced with empty seas, Korea made a decision that now defines its fisheries strategy. If wild fish will not come back, the country will grow its own.
Aquaculture already accounts for roughly 63 percent of national seafood production, up from about 47 percent in 2014. Shallow-sea farming of seaweed, oysters, and abalone leads the category. Still, coastal pens remain exposed to the same warming water that emptied the fishing grounds.
Shellfish tell an encouraging version of the story. Korean oysters and abalone have built genuine export niches, particularly in Japan and Southeast Asia. Farmed flounder does respectable business too. These products share a useful trait, namely that farmers control the growing environment far more tightly than any trawler controls the sea.
Hence the newest bet, which sits on land. In Gijang-gun, Busan, GS Engineering & Construction built Korea’s first land-based salmon farm through its subsidiary Eco Aquafarm. The facility uses a recirculating aquaculture system supplied by Norway’s AKVA group, recycling up to 99 percent of its water.
The timing matters right now. Eggs were stocked in autumn 2024, and the first commercial harvest is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026. Capacity in this first phase is modest at 500 tons per year. Phase two, however, targets a tenfold increase to 5,000 tons, and the company has openly invited international investors to participate.
Why salmon? Because Korea currently imports every gram it eats, and consumption has exploded alongside the popularity of raw-fish dining. Domestic production would substitute directly for Norwegian and Chilean imports. Similarly, salmon commands premium pricing that cheaper species cannot support.
Land-based salmon farming has a punishing track record globally, it must be said. Several high-profile Western ventures have burned enormous amounts of capital. Whether Korea’s version succeeds will depend on energy costs, biological survival rates, and disciplined scaling.
How Foreign Exporters Break Into the Korea Seafood Industry
For overseas suppliers, this market is genuinely attractive. Even so, it rewards preparation over enthusiasm.
Know which species actually move. Pollock, mackerel, croaker, squid, shrimp, salmon, and crab dominate volume. Meanwhile, niche premium products such as live lobster and sea urchin roe command high prices in narrow channels.
Understand the channel structure. Wholesale auction markets, large retail chains, e-commerce platforms, and food service each operate differently. Online seafood delivery in particular has grown fast, since it solves the freshness anxiety that keeps younger Koreans away from wet markets.
Take origin labeling seriously. Korean consumers scrutinize country of origin more intensely than most, and that scrutiny sharpened after the 2023 Fukushima water release. Certification, traceability, and radiation testing documentation are not optional extras here.
Expect price sensitivity in frozen categories. Koreans generally believe fresh fish tastes better, so chilled and live products carry premiums. Frozen goods, on the other hand, compete almost purely on price against Russian and Chinese supply.
Watch the processed segment. Home meal replacement and ready-to-eat formats offer the fastest growth. Additionally, ingredient supply to Korean processors can be steadier than fighting for retail shelf space.
The FAO country profile and the annual USDA market reports remain the most reliable free starting points for anyone conducting due diligence.
What the Korea Seafood Industry Signals for 2030
Step back, and the Korean case reads like a preview of a problem many coastal nations will face.
A wealthy country with a deep seafood culture is watching its adjacent waters empty out. Its response has three parts. First, buy abroad, which it does aggressively. Second, farm intensively, which now supplies most domestic production. Third, export high-value specialties, which currently means seaweed above all.
Each pillar carries risk. Import dependence exposes Korea to Russian geopolitics and Chinese pricing. Coastal aquaculture faces the same heat that killed the wild fishery. Meanwhile, seaweed farming is rated among the most climate-vulnerable segments of all, despite being the export champion.
The human side may prove hardest. Fishing villages are aging and emptying, mirroring the pressures we described in Korea’s small business crisis. Young Koreans do not want the work. Migrant crews fill the gap, though not without friction and not without cost.
None of this means the Korea seafood industry is collapsing. On the contrary, exports keep setting records, aquaculture technology keeps advancing, and Korean companies keep buying assets abroad. Yet the industry that emerges will look nothing like the one Noryangjin was built to serve in 1927.
The market will still be loud at two in the morning. Increasingly, though, the crates will carry someone else’s flag.
