Exporting Furniture to Korea: Priced by Volume Not Weight, Plus FTA Duty Relief, KC Safety, and the ISPM15 Pallet Trap

If you make furniture in China or Vietnam and sell into Korea, the shipping side decides whether your goods land cleanly or get stuck. Korea imports most of its furniture from China, with Vietnam next, so Korean buyers and their customs officers see a lot of it, and the friction points are predictable. Get the volume, the certificate of origin, and the pallets right, and your shipment clears without surprises for your buyer.

Furniture ships by volume, not weight

Furniture is the classic volume cargo: a sofa or cabinet is large but hollow, so it weighs far less than metal parts of the same size. Ocean LCL freight is charged on whichever is greater, weight or volume, and for furniture volume almost always wins.

The unit is CBM (cubic meters, length × width × height) and the revenue ton (R.ton). In practice 1 CBM is converted to 1,000 kg, and the greater of the volume figure and the weight figure becomes the revenue ton. Because a cubic meter of furniture weighs nowhere near 1,000 kg, the volume figure governs. How to work out volume and volumetric weight is covered in CBM and volumetric weight.

The practical takeaway for an exporter: cutting bulk and packing a container tightly, not shaving weight, is what controls the freight your buyer pays and how competitive your landed price looks.

FCL or LCL: your volume decides

Because volume sets the price, how you use the container drives the unit cost. There are two options.

For small orders, sharing a container as LCL is the answer, but bulky furniture fills a box fast. Past roughly 15 CBM, the break-even near a 20-foot container, a dedicated FCL wins on cost per CBM. Furniture is also large and prone to damage, so it gets crushed or scuffed during consolidation. Once volume allows, moving to FCL is better on both cost and damage. The full comparison is in ocean freight LCL vs FCL.

Duty and FTA: help your Korean buyer pay less

Furniture's main HS codes are 9401 for seats and chairs, 9403 for other furniture such as cabinets and storage, and 9404 for mattresses and bedding. Korea's base tariff on these is around 8%. The classification turns on material and use, so start from the principles in what an HS code is.

But the duty actually paid varies by subheading. The lower of the base rate and the WTO rate applies, and many furniture lines, such as metal furniture, wooden beds, and furniture of other materials, already sit at 0% and are duty-free without any FTA. Others, such as wooden dining tables and furniture parts, carry the full 8%.

It is on those 8% lines that the China and Vietnam FTAs earn their keep. The Korea-China and Korea-Vietnam FTAs both took effect in December 2015 and are now in their twelfth year. Lines on a ten-year elimination schedule reached zero from January 2025, in the tenth year of implementation. But it is not automatic. Your Korean buyer can only claim it if you provide a valid certificate of origin.

• Under the Korea-China and Korea-Vietnam FTAs the certificate of origin is issued by an authority (customs or a chamber of commerce), not self-certified.
• The Korea-China FTA waives the certificate when the customs value is US$700 or less.
• Even if it is missing at clearance, your buyer can claim the preferential rate retroactively within one year of import.

On a line that carries 8%, if you cannot supply the certificate your buyer pays the full rate, which makes your price look worse than a competitor who does supply it. Issuing the certificate of origin cleanly is one of the simplest ways to stay competitive in Korea. The mechanics are in certificate of origin and using FTAs.

Korea's KC safety rules: what your product must meet

Korea runs a product-safety framework, and most adult furniture sits at its lightest tier, so heavy testing is usually not required. Safety sits in four levels: safety certification, safety confirmation, supplier's declaration of conformity, and compliance with safety standards.

General adult furniture and mattresses fall under the lightest compliance with safety standards tier: no KC mark or test report, but the product must meet the standard and be labeled accordingly. Anything sold for children or infants steps up under the Special Act on the Safety of Children's Products, so define the target age clearly.

Formaldehyde comes up often. To be precise, there is no legally mandated emission limit on finished furniture in Korea. The Indoor Air Quality law regulates emitting building materials such as adhesives, paints, and flooring, and finished furniture is explicitly excluded. The rule bites on the raw material instead: plywood, particleboard, and MDF must be tested and graded for formaldehyde under the timber law, with E1 or below for indoor use and E0 or above to count as low-emission. "Furniture is unregulated" overstates it; "finished furniture has no mandated emission limit" is the accurate line.

Timber quarantine: it is your pallet, not the furniture

Solid-wood furniture sounds like a quarantine problem, but finished furniture is generally exempt: once sawn, dried, coated, and assembled into a ready-to-use product, Korea's quarantine agency treats it as an exempt processed good. Plywood and MDF are exempt too.

What actually gets held is the wood packaging under the furniture. Pallets and wooden crates must be heat-treated or fumigated under the international ISPM15 standard and carry the IPPC mark (the symbol, country code, and treatment code HT or MB). Without the mark, or if pests are found, the whole shipment can be fumigated, returned, or destroyed. Wood-packaging violations are common on cargo from China and elsewhere, and this one is squarely the exporter's responsibility, so treat and mark your pallets before loading.

Origin marking is on you as well. Furniture is subject to Korea's country-of-origin marking rules, so the origin must be marked on the product itself. English (such as Made in China) is allowed, but it has to be a size and location the final buyer can read easily and hard to remove. Missing marks can hold up clearance.

A pre-shipment checklist for shipping furniture to Korea

Before you load furniture bound for Korea, line these up.

1. HS code and duty: which of 9401, 9403, or 9404 applies, and whether an FTA preferential rate exists.
2. Certificate of origin: issue the authority-certified certificate so your buyer gets the FTA rate.
3. Volume and CBM: work out the volume to decide FCL vs LCL.
4. Wood packaging: heat-treat pallets and apply the ISPM15 IPPC mark.
5. Safety and marking: check the product's KC level and apply origin marking.

Freight structure, clearance, and quarantine are tangled together in furniture, so splitting the transport and the origin paperwork across separate parties is where cost and delay leak. Running the origin pickup, the ocean leg, and the Korea-bound documentation through one operator keeps it seamless for you and your buyer.

This guide is general information as of July 2026. Tariff rates by HS subheading, FTA preferential rates, and product safety standards vary by material, use, and regulatory change, so confirm with Korea Customs' FTA portal and your forwarder or broker before shipping.