Brands That Print the Date Directly (Korean & French Pharmacy)
Many Korean, Japanese and French-pharmacy brands stamp the manufacture or expiry date on the pack in plain numbers — here's how to read it without a batch-code decoder.
4 min read · Updated July 2026
Not every brand hides the date in a code
Western conglomerates (Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, Coty, LVMH and others) stamp a coded production date that needs decoding. But a large share of the market does the opposite: they print the manufacture or expiry date on the packaging as a plain calendar date.
This is especially common with Korean and Japanese skincare and with French-pharmacy brands. For these products you don't need a batch-code decoder at all — the date is right there once you know what to look for.
How to read the printed date
Look on the base of the bottle or jar, the crimp at the end of a tube, or the flap of the box. You'll usually see two short dates or labels.
- Manufacture date: marked MFG, MFD, MAN, MD, M, or 제조 (Korean), 生産日期 (Chinese), 製造 (Japanese).
- Expiry / best-before: marked EXP, E, BB, or 까지 (Korean), 保质期 / 消费期限.
Common formats are YYYY.MM.DD, YYYY-MM-DD or DD.MM.YYYY. If only one date is shown, Korean and Japanese products usually print the manufacture date, while EU products more often print the expiry (period-of-minimum-durability) date.
Which brands print the date directly
Korean skincare and makeup — for example Laneige, Innisfree, COSRX, Beauty of Joseon, Anua, Some By Mi, Torriden, Round Lab, Missha and most K-beauty labels.
Japanese brands such as Hada Labo, FANCL and DHC, and French-pharmacy lines such as Avène, Bioderma, Klorane, Ducray, A-Derma and Weleda, also print a readable date (some, like Bioderma, additionally encode it in the code).
Because these dates are printed in plain text, we don't run them through a decoder — reading the pack is faster and more reliable than any tool.
FAQ
My Korean skincare has no batch code I can decode — is that normal?
Yes. Most Korean and Japanese brands print the manufacture date (제造) and often the expiry date directly on the pack instead of hiding it in a coded batch number, so there's nothing to decode — just read the printed date.
If both a manufacture and an expiry date are printed, which do I trust?
The expiry (or best-before) date is the manufacturer's own guarantee, so prefer it. The manufacture date tells you how fresh the product was and, with the open-jar PAO symbol, how long you have after opening.
What does the Korean word 제조 mean on my product?
제조 means 'manufactured' — the date next to it is the production date. 까지 means 'until', marking the expiry date.