You found the product. Maybe it is a K-beauty line made outside Seoul that nobody stateside carries yet, or the exact brand of Korean instant noodles your Bellevue and Federal Way customers keep asking about, or ceramic kitchenware from a factory your family connection in Icheon has sold to for twenty years. You place the order, wire the deposit, and feel the rush every product seller remembers from their first real shipment. Then it arrives at the Port of Seattle-Tacoma, and a customs broker you have never spoken to calls asking for an HTS code, a bond number, and an FDA prior notice confirmation you did not know you needed. This is the part of selling Korean products in the US that almost nobody explains before your first container — so here it is, plainly.
Duty is not one number — it depends on your HTS code
Every imported product gets classified under an HTS (Harmonized Tariff Schedule) code, and that code — not a flat percentage you can look up once — determines the duty rate charged on each shipment. Rates for the goods Korean-American sellers commonly import vary widely: cosmetics and skincare are often duty-free or in the low single digits, packaged food varies by ingredient category, textiles and apparel typically run noticeably higher, and ceramics or general kitchenware fall somewhere in between. Two different brokers can classify the same product two different ways, and the wrong code — more than the rate itself — is the single most common reason a shipment gets held or reassessed after the fact. Get the classification confirmed in writing before your first commercial-size order, not after it is already on the water.
Don't build your business plan on the $800 de minimis rule
Many first-time sellers hear that shipments under $800 per person per day can enter the US duty-free under what customs calls the de minimis exemption (Section 321), and assume that means small orders can just be shipped in $799 batches indefinitely. Two problems with that plan. First, this exemption has been narrowed significantly since 2025 as the US tightened rules on low-value imports, and the direction has been toward less exemption, not more — a policy you should verify against current CBP guidance before you build around it, because it has changed before with little notice and can again. Second, even where de minimis still applies, deliberately splitting one order into multiple shipments specifically to duck duty is treated by US Customs and Border Protection as an attempt to evade duty — a real legal exposure, not a clever hack. Budget duty into your landed cost from day one, and treat any de minimis relief as a bonus, not the plan.
The rules change by category — cosmetics, food, and everything else
Cosmetics: Korean skincare and makeup sold in the US fall under the FDA's Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA). The manufacturing facility must be registered with the FDA, every product you sell must be listed with the FDA, and you need a US-based 'responsible person' the FDA can contact. Enforcement timelines have shifted more than once since MoCRA passed, so confirm the current registration deadline directly with the FDA or a compliance consultant rather than an older blog post — including, frankly, this one, months from now.
Food: Korean snacks, sauces, and packaged food require the facility that manufactures them to be registered with the FDA, and a Prior Notice must be filed for each shipment before it arrives — separate from the customs entry itself. A missing prior notice is one of the most common reasons Korean food shipments sit at the port past their expected clearance date.
Everything else: kitchenware, home goods, electronics, and toys each answer to different agencies — CPSC for anything a child might use, the FCC for anything with a radio or Bluetooth chip, and so on. The safest assumption is that your product category has its own agency and its own paperwork until a broker or compliance consultant tells you otherwise.
What an importer of record actually needs in place:
- An EIN from the IRS — most freight forwarders and brokers will not process a formal entry without one, even for a brand-new LLC.
- A customs bond — a single-entry bond for occasional shipments, or a continuous bond once you are importing regularly.
- A licensed customs broker or freight forwarder who has actually cleared cosmetics or food from Korea before, not only from China.
- A per-SKU HTS classification list kept as a living spreadsheet you own, not locked away inside your broker's file.
- A commercial invoice and packing list in English with accurate country-of-origin and declared value on every shipment — undervaluing a shipment to save on duty is a well-known audit trigger.
- Country-of-origin labeling on the product or packaging itself, which US Customs checks separately from the paperwork.
Choosing a broker — the Seattle-Tacoma route, and why the port matters less than the broker
The Northwest Seaport Alliance — Seattle and Tacoma together — is one of the most direct trans-Pacific routes from Busan and Incheon, which is relevant if you are part of the growing Korean seller community across Bellevue, Lynnwood, Federal Way, and Tacoma. But sellers in Atlanta, Dallas, LA, or Chicago typically route the same goods through different ports (Savannah, Long Beach, and others), and the underlying compliance questions — HTS classification, FDA registration, bonding — are identical regardless of city. The choice of broker matters far more than the choice of port: look for one who can name actual cosmetics or Korean food clients they have cleared, not just a general import license.
What this means for your Shopify store and your pricing
Once goods clear customs, duty, broker fees, and any FDA compliance or testing costs need to be part of the landed cost per SKU before you set a price in your store — not discovered as a surprise line item after your first reorder. Sellers who price purely off the factory quote watch their margin quietly disappear the moment a real shipment clears. This is separate from, and layered before, US sales tax — the two costs stack, and both belong in your cost sheet from the first listing, not added in after the fact.
When you actually need a professional, and when you don't
Honesty corner. A handful of sample-sized orders under a few hundred dollars to test demand can usually go through DHL or FedEx, who often handle the informal entry paperwork themselves — you do not need a broker on retainer for that stage. Once you are placing recurring commercial orders, holding real inventory in a US warehouse, and building the business around ongoing imports, a licensed customs broker stops being optional — and for cosmetics or food specifically, a compliance consultant for MoCRA or food registration is worth the fee. The fines and shipment holds from getting this wrong cost far more than professional fees ever do.