No. 170Numbers3 minviews 8
Published by GK Library Annex
Does a Barcode Starting With 880 Mean Made in Korea?
What the 13 digits under a snack bag's barcode actually tell you, and what the last check digit does
Under the barcode on the back of a snack bag there are 13 digits, and most products sold in Korea start with 880. 880 is indeed Korea's country code, but it does not mean the product was made in Korea. It means the product's number was issued by an organization in Korea.
How the 13 digits are split
The 13 digits under a barcode split into four parts from the left. The first three are the country code, the next six the company code, the next three the product code, and the last one a check digit. Country codes are handed out to each country by GS1, the international barcode organization, and Korea's is 880. The company code is issued to member companies by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry's distribution institute, and each company assigns product codes to its own items.
So snacks from the same company share the first nine digits and differ only in the product code. The price is not stored in the barcode either. The checkout scanner reads the number, and the store's computer pulls up the price saved for that number.
880 is not the country of origin
The country code shows where the number was issued, not where the product was made. That is because the barcode number is assigned by the company that owns the brand, not by the factory. A snack a Korean company has made in a Chinese factory starts with 880, while a product a Chinese company orders from a Korean factory can start with a Chinese code.
You may hear that a barcode in the 690s means made in China, but that is only half right. Codes in the 690s are Chinese country codes, but they do not tell you the country of manufacture. If you want to know where something was made, the origin or country-of-manufacture label on the back of the package is accurate, not the barcode digits.
The last digit is for checking
The final digit is calculated from the first twelve. You take the odd-position digits as they are, multiply the even-position digits by 3, add everything up, and the check digit is whatever you must add to make that sum a multiple of 10. For 880123456001 the sum is 74, so you need 6 to reach 80, and the last digit is 6.
If the checkout misreads one digit or a cashier types the number wrong, this calculation no longer works out and the machine notices at once. When a barcode is torn and the number has to be typed in by hand, the same method catches typos.
A barcode starting with 880 means the number was issued in Korea; check the package's country-of-manufacture label for origin.
Notes and references · GS1 Korea (KCCI distribution institute) GTIN guide. Based on its explanation of the country, company, product and check-digit structure and that the country code does not indicate origin. Small members split the digits differently, such as an 8-digit company code and 1-digit product code.
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