Atomy Co., Ltd.
Free to join, genuinely cheap products, and a Korean regulator’s own filing showing that 88.1% of its 2.84 million registered Korean members were paid nothing at all in 2024.
Joining costs nothing and the products really are cheaper than the supermarket - but the Korea Fair Trade Commission filing shows 88.1% of Korean members received no commission in 2024 and the top 1% took 85.3% of everything paid.
Can you actually make money with Atomy?
Yes, under conditions, and the entry side is as clean as this category gets. Registration is genuinely free: no kit, no application fee, no annual renewal, no autoship and no monthly qualification volume in any published plan document. The gate on the binary is 10,000 cumulative personal PV, which measured across 29 official US SKUs at a median 564 PV per dollar comes to about $18. Accumulated volume never flushes, either.
The products are also cheaper than the supermarket, and that was measured rather than accepted. The toothpaste multipack runs $0.022 a gram against Colgate Total Whitening Gel at Walmart at $0.058, roughly 62% less. HemoHIM is $105 for 60 pouches direct against $115.99 for the identical box on a marketplace, so the member price undercuts the resellers. Somebody who buys this and never recruits anybody has not been overcharged.
The earnings side is documented by a regulator rather than by the company, and it is the hardest participant data on this site. The Korea Fair Trade Commission filing for 2024 shows 336,513 of 2,839,800 registered Korean members received any commission at all, so 88.1% received none. The 2023 filing said 88.3% and the 2017 filing 90.3%. In 2023 the top 1% took 271.2 billion won of the 317.8 billion paid.
And the plan contains no retail-sales requirement anywhere. No customer-volume test, no percentage-to-outside-customers rule. Personal PV may be applied to the weaker leg, which makes self-purchase the efficient way to repair a binary imbalance, and every dealership class through Exclusive Distributor is reachable on accumulated personal purchases alone, roughly $4,255 of them. Nothing is published for the United States, Canada or Europe, so the Korean filing is the only outcome data in existence.
registration is genuinely free - no kit, no application fee, no autoship, no renewal - but the binary legs accrue nothing until 10,000 cumulative personal PV, worth roughly $18
- You want the products at these prices. That is the part which measures well, and an $18 gate with no renewal means somebody who buys and never builds has risked about one order of vitamins.
- You can acquire customers under the conduct rules. No logo use, no selling-intent posts, no selling livestreams and no marketplace resale leaves warm market and education centers, which is a narrow channel to run a customer business through.
- You accept the Korean filing as the only published outcome. No earnings disclosure exists for the United States, Canada or Europe on any Atomy property, so a Western prospect is reading numbers from another market or none at all.
- You are not relying on the plan to reward selling. Nothing in it tests or credits volume reaching people outside the network, and your own purchases count toward the weaker leg.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
LEGAL - Atomy Co., Ltd. is a registered multi-level seller (다단계판매업자) in South Korea and files the annual statutory disclosure the Door-to-Door Sales Act requires. No Korea Fair Trade Commission administrative measure against Atomy - no corrective order, no surcharge, no public warning - could be located in this research, and no US Federal Trade Commission action, state attorney-general action, consent order or warning letter naming Atomy or Atomy America Inc. was found. Absence of a located record is not proof of a clean file: the KFTC case database is robots-blocked and could not be queried directly. Two open items are recorded at their exact stage. The Daejeon Regional Tax Office, Investigation Bureau 1, opened a tax examination in early December 2024 scheduled to run to about March 2025; the company described it as a routine cycle repeated every four to five years, its previous audit having been in 2020. No assessment, penalty or finding has been published and the outcome is undetermined. Separately, a private contract dispute in the Daejeon District Court over a member terminated for reselling on open marketplaces was decided partly each way - the first instance accepted that online resale caused serious business harm, the appeal found procedural defects in the disciplinary process and reinstated the membership. That is a civil dispute between a company and a member, not a regulatory matter.
Confidence: Medium
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
A South Korean consumer-goods, cosmetics and supplement company selling through a binary multi-level plan under the slogan "absolute quality, absolute price." Registration is free and instant - no starter kit, no application fee, no autoship and no annual renewal appears anywhere in the published plan documents. Members buy household staples, personal care, skincare and functional foods at a member price, and earn from a weekly pool distributed on matched left-and-right-leg volume.
The price claim is the strongest thing in the file and it should be reported first, because it is real and it is measurable. The 5 × 200 g toothpaste multipack is $22.00 for 1,000 grams - $0.022 per gram - against Colgate Total Whitening Gel at Walmart at $7.88 for 136 grams, $0.058 per gram. That is roughly 62% cheaper per gram than a mainstream premium toothpaste at a mass retailer. HemoHIM, developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, costs $105 for 60 pouches, which at the label dose of two a day is $3.50 a day against $4.33 a day for the leading Korean red-ginseng stick - and the identical box resells on Walmart’s marketplace at $115.99, so the member price undercuts its own gray market. A member price below the third-party resale price is the opposite of commission-loading. The skincare is only mid-premium, and the 50 g travel toothpaste at $0.12 per gram is worse than Colgate, but on the consumables the slogan is earned.
The entry gate is likewise cheap, and this report will not hedge about it. Nothing in the plan functions until 10,000 cumulative personal PV has been reached - the binary legs do not accrue volume at all before that. Atomy publishes no PV-to-currency ratio, so we derived one from 29 products on the official US store in July 2026: the range is 385 to 731 PV per dollar with a median of 564. At that median, 10,000 PV costs about $18. One order of vitamins clears it; one box of HemoHIM clears it six times over; a household buying toothpaste, shampoo and detergent clears it in two or three ordinary orders. Against the $200 to $1,500 starter kits and mandatory monthly autoships that are normal in this industry, that is among the lowest real entry costs of anything graded on this site.
And then the Korea Fair Trade Commission data, which is the backbone of this report and which almost no English-language coverage of Atomy uses. Korean law requires registered multi-level sellers to file annual figures the regulator then publishes at company level - a statutory filing, not a marketing document. The 2024 filing: 336,513 of 2,839,800 registered members received any commission, so 88.1% received nothing. The 2023 filing: 88.3% received nothing, and the top 1% of all registered members took ₩271.2 billion of ₩317.8 billion paid, 85.3% of everything. Those who were paid averaged ₩924,000 for the year, about US$670, before the cost of the products they bought to qualify. In 2024, 352 members out of 2.84 million earned ₩100 million or more - 0.012%, about one in eight thousand. The per-rank breakdown could not be retrieved because the KFTC company-detail pages are robots-blocked; every Atomy-specific figure here is as reported by Korean press citing those filings, and that limitation is stated wherever the numbers appear.
Where the ₩317.8 billion of 2023 commissions went
Korea Fair Trade Commission statutory filing for the 2023 year, as reported by Korean press - the per-rank table itself is robots-blocked and could not be read off the regulator’s record. Percentages are shares of total commissions paid, not of members. The middle band is derived by subtraction from the two published figures.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Registration Genuinely free. No starter kit, no application fee, no autoship, no annual renewal and no monthly qualification volume appears in any published plan document for the US, Canada, Europe or Korea. This is unusually clean and it is not a marketing claim - the plan pages say so. |
$0 one-time |
— |
| The 10,000 PV gate The official plan PDF: "Downline sales of left and right legs accumulate from cumulative 10,000 Personal PV or more." Until it is met, the binary accrues nothing. At the measured median of 564 PV per dollar, about $18; the realistic band is $14 to $26, and about $37 if bought entirely in low-PV personal care. |
~$18 one-time, lifetime cumulative |
— |
| HemoHIM (60 × 20 ml) Developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, made by Kolmar BNH. $1.75 a pouch, $3.50 a day at the label dose of two - against $4.33 a day for the leading Korean red-ginseng stick at $129.99 for 30. The same box sells on Walmart’s marketplace at $115.99. |
$105.00 per unit |
66,000 PV |
| Toothpaste, 5 × 200 g $0.022 per gram against Colgate Total Whitening Gel at Walmart at $0.058 per gram - roughly 62% cheaper. Note the PV ratio here is 273 PV per dollar, less than half the median, so this is a good buy and a poor route to the gate. |
$22.00 per unit |
6,000 PV |
| Toothpaste, 50 g travel $0.12 per gram - over five times the multipack rate and materially worse than Colgate. Recorded because a fair price test reports the losses as well as the wins; the value is in the multipack only. |
$6.00 per unit |
4,000 PV |
| Absolute Skincare Set A six-step system, listed at member $215 and non-member $300 in the 2021 catalog. Squarely in the price band of premium Korean lines at $200–400, and far above a comparable six-item mass-market regimen at under $80. Competitive with premium K-beauty, not cheap. |
$260.00 per unit |
175,000 PV |
| Health Care Best Kit 667 PV per dollar, above the median. Not required for anything - no kit is mandatory at any point in this plan - but it is the fastest single-order route past the 10,000 PV gate short of HemoHIM. |
$150.00 per unit |
100,000 PV |
| Non-member retail price Atomy publishes a second, higher price for non-members, which is real evidence that a two-tier retail channel is contemplated. The plan never requires anyone to use it, and the conduct rules make advertising a price difficult, so it functions as a possibility rather than a business. |
e.g. $27 vs member $17 on toothpaste per unit |
— |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
Born 11 May 1956; BA in trade from Kyonggi University, MBA and DBA from Woosong University. Founded an internet shopping mall, IM Korea Dot-com, in the 1990s; it failed, and he started Atomy after age 50. Elected head of the Korea Direct Selling Industry Association in 2019. No regulatory action, fraud judgment or criminal proceeding against him could be located in any jurisdiction reviewed. One non-legal item belongs on the record only because Atomy’s Korean and Korean-diaspora recruiting runs heavily through church networks: he has said he belonged to the Guwonpa sect for about twenty years from high school and withdrew in 1995, and a Korean Presbyterian denomination placed him on a watchlist in 2014 and rescinded that decision in 2021. That is a denominational body’s internal decision, later reversed. It is not a regulatory finding and not a legal matter.
Park Han-gil, his spouse Do Kyung-hee (도경희), and their children Park Ji-hoon (박지훈) and Park Han-gyeol (박한결) hold 50,000 shares each of 200,000 outstanding. There is no outside shareholder, no listing, no audited consolidated group account in the public domain and no independent board voice identifiable from any filing located. Every figure quoted here for the Korean entity is a separate-entity figure reported by Korean press; the group consolidation is not published.
The dividend record is the clearest window into how surplus is allocated. ₩103.5 billion went to the four family shareholders across 2010–2015, roughly 46.7% of net profit over the period; ₩207.8 billion across 2012–2017; ₩139.6 billion across 2020–2023; then ₩40 billion in 2024 and ₩40 billion again in 2025. Cumulative family dividends since 2012 were reported at roughly ₩340 billion as of 2024. The company’s answer is that its ten-year average payout ratio is about 32%, comparable to Korean listed-company averages, which is a fair point and is recorded. The timing is the issue: the ₩80 billion taken across 2024–25 was taken while three overseas subsidiaries sat in capital impairment at end-2025 - Brazil at −₩4.4 billion, the UK at −₩4.5 billion and an Asia-Pacific entity at −₩1.9 billion, with the exact entity list unverified because two source reports disagree on one of them. Related-party loans stood at ₩38.1 billion, up 32.6% from ₩28.7 billion, split between S.A Partners at ₩18 billion and PLHD Partners at ₩20.1 billion, with terms, interest and collateral undisclosed.
The flagship HemoHIM was developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute and has been produced since 2004 by Sun Biotech Co., Ltd., now the KOSDAQ-listed Kolmar BNH. Atomy’s origin is a 2009 product supply contract between Park Han-gil and that manufacturer. Other suppliers include Korea Kolmar, Diotech Korea and Mirae Life. Whether Park Han-gil or family members hold any equity in Kolmar BNH or Korea Kolmar could not be verified; no filing confirming a cross-shareholding was located. The dependency runs both ways, and it has begun to bite: Kolmar BNH now markets HemoHIM G independently in Taiwan and Europe, so the manufacturer competes with its own distribution channel.
Registered address
Gongju, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea
A large business by any measure: ₩1.264 trillion of Korean net sales in 2025 on a 15.9% operating margin, group revenue ranked tenth in the 2025 Direct Selling News Global 100 at US$1.83 billion, 26 overseas branches and roughly ₩1.25 trillion of overseas revenue in 2024. The mix matters more than the total for a Western reader. Korea is on the order of 45–50% of group revenue and China alone about 16%; the United States sits above ₩100 billion, which is under 5%. Someone joining in the US is joining a market that is a rounding error in the group’s economics - and for which no income disclosure of any kind is published. The only real earnings evidence anywhere in the world is Korean, and it describes a mature, saturated field that the Western field does not resemble.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
WATCH
Atomy Co., Ltd., incorporated May 2009 in Gongju, South Korea. Private and unlisted, 200,000 shares held 25% each by Chairman Park Han-gil, his spouse and their two children. No outside shareholder, no published consolidated group accounts.
|
| What does it really cost? |
OK
Registration is free - no kit, no fee, no autoship, no renewal. The only gate is 10,000 cumulative personal PV, which at the measured median of 564 PV per dollar is about $18. Reaching Exclusive Distributor on self-purchase alone would cost roughly $4,255.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
RED
None for the US, Canada, Europe or any Western market. Korea Fair Trade Commission statutory filings exist and are public: 88.1% of 2,839,800 registered Korean members were paid nothing in 2024, and the top 1% took 85.3% of all commissions in 2023.
|
| Are the products actually good value? |
OK
On the consumables, yes, measurably. Toothpaste at $0.022/g against Colgate Total at Walmart at $0.058/g; HemoHIM at $3.50/day against $4.33/day for the leading Korean comparator, and cheaper direct than on its own gray market. Skincare is mid-premium, not cheap.
|
| Is there a retail-sales requirement? |
RED
No. No customer-volume test and no percentage-to-outside-customers rule anywhere in the published plan. Every rank including Exclusive Distributor is reachable on internal consumption, and personal PV is applied to the weaker leg.
|
| Any regulatory action against the company? |
WATCH
None located - no KFTC corrective order, surcharge or warning, no FTC or state attorney-general action. The KFTC case database is robots-blocked so absence of a located record is not proof. A Daejeon Regional Tax Office examination opened December 2024 remains open with no published outcome.
|
| Can you get your money back if you leave? |
OK
There is nothing to get back, which is the point. No entry payment, no renewal, no downline forfeiture penalty - the only thing lost on leaving is accrued PV. Product return terms sit under ordinary consumer law in each market.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
CONCERN
Miner, despite genuinely competitive prices. Nothing in the plan requires a single outside customer, the conduct rules ban logo use, price posting, selling livestreams and marketplace resale, and the KFTC filing shows 88.1% of the field paid nothing.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Open the binary at all | ~$18 10,000 cumulative personal PV at the measured median of 564 PV per $1 |
| Be paid anything at all in a year | beat 88.1% of the field KFTC 2024 filing: 336,513 of 2,839,800 Korean members received any commission |
| Match the average member who was paid | ₩924,000 (~$670) a year KFTC 2023 filing, gross and before the cost of products bought to qualify |
| Reach Exclusive Distributor without recruiting anyone | ~$4,255 of self-purchase 2.4 million accumulated personal PV at 564 PV per $1 |
Read this twice
Two facts sit awkwardly together here and both are true. The first is that entry is cheap in a way almost nothing else on this site is. Registration costs nothing, there is no kit, no autoship, no renewal and no monthly qualification volume; the only gate is 10,000 cumulative personal PV, and at the median ratio measured across 29 official US health-care SKUs - 564 PV per dollar, range 385 to 731 - that is about $18. One order of vitamins clears it. A household buying staples clears it inside three months of ordinary shopping. Nobody is going to be ruined by $18, and the products bought to get there are, on the consumables, cheaper than the supermarket equivalent. The second fact is what happens next. The KFTC filing for 2024 shows 88.1% of registered Korean members were paid nothing that year; the 2023 filing shows the top 1% taking 85.3% of all commissions and the bottom 60% of those paid sharing 2.7%. The average payment to someone who was paid at all was ₩924,000, about US$670, gross of everything they bought. So the honest arithmetic is not about recovering a large outlay - there is no large outlay. It is that the plan’s own architecture makes roughly $4,255 of self-purchase a complete substitute for building any organization up to Exclusive Distributor, that personal PV is applied to the weak leg so buying repairs the imbalance that selling was supposed to, and that the thing being bought with time rather than money is a lottery with a one-in-eight-thousand top prize. And a Western reader should hold one more caveat: none of these numbers describe the US, Canada or Europe, because Atomy publishes no income disclosure for any of them.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
Commission on a household buying ordinary consumables at Atomy prices, which are genuinely low - the toothpaste is about 62% cheaper per gram than Colgate Total at Walmart. That is also why the per-customer commission is small: cheap products mean small commissions, and volume has to come from headcount. Holding cost is zero once the 10,000 PV gate is passed, and that gate is worth roughly $18. The Korea Fair Trade Commission recorded 88.1% of Korean members earning no commission at all in 2024. Your own subscription cost of $0/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
Most companies graded on this site lose this exercise badly. Atomy largely wins it, and the report says so without hedging. These are Atomy’s own published July 2026 US prices against open-market equivalents priced the same month, on a per-gram, per-day or per-item basis rather than per package - which is the only way a price claim can be tested at all.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Toothpaste, 5 × 200 g - $22.00 ($0.022/g) | Colgate Total Whitening Gel at Walmart, 1,000 g equivalent | ~$58 |
| Toothpaste, 50 g travel size - $6.00 ($0.12/g) | Colgate Total at Walmart, same 50 g | ~$2.90 |
| HemoHIM - $105 for 60 pouches, $3.50/day at label dose | Leading Korean red-ginseng stick, $129.99 for 30 at $4.33/day | ~$130/month |
| HemoHIM bought through Atomy - $105 | The identical box on Walmart’s marketplace | $115.99 |
| Absolute Skincare Set - $260 for six steps | A comparable six-item mass-market regimen | under $80 |
| Absolute Skincare Set - $260 for six steps | A premium Korean multi-piece set of similar positioning | ~$200–400 |
| The 10,000 PV gate - ~$18 of product | Buying the same staples anywhere and having no legs to fill | $0 extra |
| Total as sold ~$300 of staples and supplements a year, plus a one-off ~$18 gate |
Total, built yourself ~$400+ for the same consumables at a mass retailer |
Price-to-value
Atomy wins on the consumables and it wins clearly. The toothpaste is roughly 62% cheaper per gram than a mainstream premium brand at Walmart, the flagship supplement is about 19% cheaper per day than the leading Korean comparator, and - the single most telling line in the table - buying HemoHIM direct at $105 is cheaper than buying the same box from a third-party reseller at $115.99. When a member price undercuts its own gray market, the price is not inflated to fund commissions. Two losses are recorded honestly: the travel toothpaste is four times Colgate’s per-gram rate, and the skincare is mid-premium rather than cheap. The correct conclusion is uncomfortable for the plan rather than for the products. A household that would buy Korean-made toothpaste, shampoo and detergent anyway is not being overcharged to fund anyone’s commission - which is precisely why so many of the 2.84 million registered Korean members are, correctly, just shoppers who never get paid.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Household shopper
joins for the member price, buys staples, never really builds
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 5% | −$20 |
| 6 mo | 7% | −$25 |
| 1 yr | 9% | −$35 |
| 3 yr | 10% | −$60 |
| 5 yr | 11% | −$80 |
Warm-market builder
10 hrs/wk, friends and family, education-center attendance
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 6% | −$260 |
| 6 mo | 9% | −$480 |
| 1 yr | 12% | −$850 |
| 3 yr | 15% | −$1,900 |
| 5 yr | 16% | −$2,700 |
Full-time builder
30+ hrs/wk, pushing personal PV to a dealership class, travel and events
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 3% | −$1,400 |
| 6 mo | 5% | −$2,700 |
| 1 yr | 8% | −$4,900 |
| 3 yr | 12% | −$11,000 |
| 5 yr | 14% | −$16,000 |
Methodology note. ANCHORED to the Korea Fair Trade Commission statutory filings, which are the only real participant data that exists for this company anywhere: that 336,513 of 2,839,800 registered Korean members received any commission in 2024, so 88.1% received none; that 88.3% received none in 2023 and 90.3% in 2017, making the pattern eight years old and flat; that the top 1% of all registered members took ₩271.2 billion of ₩317.8 billion paid in 2023 and the bottom 60% of recipients shared ₩8.49 billion; that the average payment to a member who was paid anything was ₩924,000, about US$670; and that 352 members, 0.012%, earned ₩100 million or more in 2024. Anchored also to the measured cost side: free registration, the 10,000 PV gate at a median 564 PV per dollar, the ₩4,000-per-point value in the official plan PDF, the point ceilings by dealership class from the European plan, and the self-purchase ladder of roughly $532 to Agent, $1,241 to Special Agent, $2,660 to Dealer and $4,255 to Exclusive Distributor. MODELED by us: every dollar figure in the tables, because Atomy publishes no expense data and no Western income disclosure at all; the share of each cohort in cumulative profit; the cohort definitions, which the company does not segment; and the assumption that the Western field resembles the Korean one, which is the weakest assumption here and is flagged as such. Two calibrations cut in Atomy’s favor and are built into the household-shopper row. The entry cost is genuinely about $18 rather than hundreds, so the median line stays shallow; and the products bought to reach the gate are, on the consumables, cheaper per gram and per day than the mass-retail equivalent, so a shopper who would have bought them anyway is not out of pocket on the goods. That is why this cohort’s median never falls far - not because the plan pays, but because there is very little to lose.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
15188.1% of registered Korean members were paid nothing in 2024
2The top 1% took 85.3% of every won of commission paid
3352 members out of 2.84 million earned ₩100 million or more
4Those who were paid averaged ₩924,000 - about US$670 - for the year
5There is no income disclosure for the US, Canada, Europe or any Western market
6There is no retail-sales requirement anywhere in the plan
7Personal PV is applied to the weaker leg
8The self-purchase ladder replaces an organization entirely
9Commissions ran at 34.8% of revenue against a 35% statutory ceiling
10From Diamond Master upward, rank is a count of downline leaders
11₩80 billion of dividends across 2024–25 while three subsidiaries sat impaired
12₩38.1 billion of related-party loans on undisclosed terms
13A tax examination is open with no published outcome
14The conduct rules make ordinary customer acquisition close to impossible
15PV is an opaque internal currency
Green flags
101The price claim is real, and it was measured rather than accepted
2The member price undercuts its own gray market
3Joining genuinely costs nothing
4The 10,000 PV gate costs about $18
5Accumulated volume never flushes
6A regulator-mandated earnings disclosure exists and is public
7The company is profitable from product margin, not participant inflow
8A published non-member retail price exists
9Seventeen years of continuous operation and no located regulatory sanction
10The conduct rules genuinely suppress hype
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Publishing a US, Canadian and European income disclosure with medians, means, the percentage earning nothing and time-in-business cohorts - worth a full grade step on its own, because a Western prospect currently has no data about their own market at all.
- Introducing a genuine retail-sales qualification above Sales Rep - a minimum non-member customer count or a percentage-of-volume-to-outside-customers test - and publishing the PV-to-currency ratio on every product page so the gate and every rank above it can be priced without reverse-engineering.
- Relaxing the conduct rules enough to permit lawful, disclosed retail selling at published prices, plus consolidated group accounts, the terms of the ₩38.1 billion of related-party loans, and a published clean outcome to the Daejeon tax examination.
Downward
- Any KFTC administrative measure - corrective order, surcharge or public warning - or any US FTC or state attorney-general action or income-claims enforcement matter in any market.
- Introduction of autoship, monthly qualification volume, paid rank-advancement packs or member-charged event and tools revenue, any one of which would convert a genuinely cheap entry into a recurring cost.
- A future KFTC filing showing the zero-commission share above roughly 90% or top-1% concentration above roughly 90%, an adverse outcome to the tax examination, or further overseas subsidiary insolvencies alongside continued ₩40 billion annual dividends.
Grade is C−. The cheapest real entry on this site and a price claim that survives a calculator, attached to a regulator’s filing showing 88.1% of the Korean field paid nothing in 2024.
Start with what is genuinely good, because it is unusual. Registration costs nothing - no kit, no fee, no autoship, no renewal, no monthly volume - and the only gate is 10,000 cumulative personal PV, which at the median ratio measured across 29 official US SKUs works out at roughly $18. That is not a hedge; it is one of the lowest real entry costs of anything graded here, and a household would clear it in two or three ordinary shopping orders. The products behind it hold up too. The toothpaste multipack is $0.022 per gram against Colgate Total at Walmart at $0.058 - about 62% cheaper. HemoHIM works out at $3.50 a day against $4.33 for the leading Korean red-ginseng comparator, and buying it direct at $105 is cheaper than the same box resold on Walmart’s marketplace at $115.99. A member price below its own gray market is the clearest possible evidence that the price is not carrying a hidden commission load. The skincare is only mid-premium and the travel toothpaste is bad value, and both are recorded - but "absolute price" is substantially earned on the consumables, and a company that prices honestly deserves to be told so.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission is where it turns, and this is the part of the file almost no English coverage uses. Korean law obliges registered multi-level sellers to file annual figures the regulator publishes at company level - a statutory filing, not a company brochure. For 2024 it shows 336,513 of 2,839,800 registered Atomy members received any commission at all: 88.1% received nothing. For 2023 it shows 88.3% receiving nothing, the top 1% of all registered members taking ₩271.2 billion of ₩317.8 billion paid - 85.3% of everything - and the bottom 60% of those who were paid sharing ₩8.49 billion. Members who were paid averaged ₩924,000, about US$670, gross of every product they bought. In 2024, 352 people out of 2.84 million cleared ₩100 million: 0.012%, one in eight thousand. Two contextual figures make it sharper. Atomy pays commission to 11.9% of its Korean field against roughly a third of the field at the largest legacy US direct seller operating in the same market - a company with a quarter of Atomy’s registered members that pays almost as many people in absolute terms. And commissions ran at 34.8% of revenue against Korea’s 35% statutory ceiling: the maximum extraction the law permits. One honest limitation belongs with all of it. The per-rank breakdown could not be retrieved, because the KFTC company-detail pages are robots-blocked; every Atomy-specific figure above is as reported by Korean press citing those filings rather than read off the regulator’s own record.
Then two things a prospective Western participant should weigh separately. The first is that none of the above describes them. Atomy publishes no income disclosure for the United States, Canada, Europe or anywhere else in the West - the US is under 5% of group revenue, a market the group barely notices - so a reader in Ohio or Manchester is joining a field for which no published data exists at all, using Korean numbers from a mature and saturated market as the only available proxy. The second is governance. The company is 100% family-held across four shareholders at 25% each, with no outside shareholder, no listing and no published consolidated accounts. ₩40 billion of dividends was taken in 2024 and ₩40 billion again in 2025, on top of roughly ₩340 billion cumulatively since 2012, while three overseas subsidiaries sat in capital impairment at end-2025 and related-party loans rose 32.6% to ₩38.1 billion on terms that are not disclosed. A Daejeon Regional Tax Office examination opened in December 2024 and no outcome has been published: open and undetermined, not adverse. None of that is a finding against anyone. All of it is the part of the file a participant cannot check.
Just be the shopper
This is the rare case where the honest answer is to buy the product and skip the plan. The toothpaste really is about 62% cheaper per gram than Colgate at Walmart, HemoHIM really is cheaper direct than on its own gray market, and there is no kit, no autoship and no renewal to escape. Register, buy the staples you would buy anyway, and simply never treat the binary as an income plan. Most of the 2.84 million registered Korean members have arrived at exactly this position, and the KFTC data says they were right.
Do the 88.1% sum before anyone shows you a rank chart
The regulator’s 2024 filing says 336,513 of 2,839,800 people were paid anything at all. The 2023 filing says one percent of the field took 85.3% of the money. If your sponsor has a rank chart, ask which of those two numbers it is meant to answer. And ask what the equivalent figures are for your own country - the answer is that there are none, because no Western income disclosure is published, and that answer is itself the information.
Price the gate, then price the ladder
The gate is about $18 and nobody should pretend otherwise. But the same measured ratio prices Agent at roughly $532 of self-purchase, Special Agent at $1,241, Dealer at $2,660 and Exclusive Distributor at $4,255 - all reachable without selling anything to anybody. Before you commit time, write down which of those you intend to reach and by which route. If the honest answer is personal accumulation, you are buying a rank, not building a business.
Sell price-competitive Korean consumer goods without the plan
The interesting fact buried in this file is that the products win a like-for-like price test. That is a merchant proposition, and it does not require a binary. Sourcing or reselling competitively priced Korean personal care and functional foods - with published prices, an advertisable brand, a marketplace listing and a customer list you own - is the business the conduct rules specifically forbid members from running. Nothing stops you running it outside the plan, where the margin is yours and nobody can terminate you for putting a price on the internet.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- Korea Fair Trade Commission - multi-level sales operator information disclosure (다단계판매업자 주요정보 공개), 2025 publication covering filing year 2024, published 30 July 2025
Korea Fair Trade Commission statutory multi-level disclosure, 2024 filing year (published 30 July 2025), as reported by EBN News - Atomy 2,839,800 registered salespersons, 336,513 (11.9%) receiving any commission, so 88.1% receiving none; comparator figures for the largest legacy US direct seller operating in Korea at 840,105 registered and 323,869 (38.6%) paid
Not established by this document: The KFTC's per-company detail pages under 사업자정보공개 are robots-blocked and render only through an internal frameset; the Atomy-specific rows are therefore cited to Korean press reporting the same filing rather than read off the regulator's record directly.
- EBN, "다단계판매 '침체'…매출액·수당·판매원 일제히 하락" (30 July 2025) - reporting the KFTC filing: Atomy 2,839,800 registered salespersons of whom 336,513 (11.9%) received any commission, against Korea Amway's 840,105 registered and 323,869 (38.6%) paid
- Yonhap, "다단계 판매원 10명 중 8명 작년 후원수당 '0원'" (30 July 2025) - the KFTC 2024-filing-year headline figures and the 83.3% zero-payment share
- 필드뉴스 (Fieldnews) TAX-IN, "[단독][탐사IN] 세무조사 받는 애터미, 회원 수당 '양극화'…상위 쏠림 심각-②" (2 January 2025) - KFTC 2023 filing year: 2,945,189 registered, 343,600 paid (11.6%), total commissions ₩317.772bn at 34.8% of ₩912.24bn VAT-inclusive revenue, top 1% taking ₩271.16bn (85.3%), 366 members at ≥₩100m (0.01%)
Korea Fair Trade Commission statutory disclosure, 2023 filing year, as reported by Fieldnews TAX-IN part 2, 2 January 2025 - 2,945,189 registered, 343,600 (11.6%) paid, 2,601,557 (88.3%) unpaid, total commissions ₩317.772bn at 34.8% of ₩912.24bn revenue including VAT, average per recipient ₩924,000, top 1% of members taking ₩271.16bn (85.3%), bottom 60% of recipients ₩8.49bn (2.7%), 366 members at ≥₩100m - Fieldnews TAX-IN part 1, 2 January 2025 - Daejeon Regional Tax Office Investigation Bureau 1 examination opened early December 2024 to approximately March 2025, company characterisation as a routine four-to-five-year cycle with the previous audit in 2020, no published outcome; ownership at 200,000 shares split 25% each among four family shareholders; NEWS M and Sisa Focus (25 April 2018) for the dividend series ₩103.5bn 2010–2015, ₩207.8bn 2012–2017, ₩139.6bn 2020–2023 and the 2017 filing-year figures
Not established by this document: Part 1 of the Fieldnews TAX-IN series - the piece carrying the Daejeon Regional Tax Office Investigation Bureau 1 timeline (December 2024 to about March 2025) and the four-to-five-year audit cycle characterisation - has a distinct article ID that did not surface in search; only part 2 resolved. The NEWS M and Sisa Focus (25 April 2018) dividend-series reports (₩103.5bn 2010-2015, ₩207.8bn 2012-2017, ₩139.6bn 2020-2023) were likewise not retrieved.
- NF통신, "애터미 등 직접판매 시장의 현실과 수익 구조의 명암" (13 April 2025) - the same KFTC 2023 data restated: 343,632 paid of about 2.94m registered (11.7%), ₩317.7bn total, average ₩924,000 per recipient
- 한국마케팅신문 (Korea Marketing News), "다단계 매출 줄었지만, 억대 연봉 1,736명" (7 August 2025) - ≥₩100m earners by company for the 2024 filing year: Korea Amway 389, Atomy 352, PM International Korea 204, Nu Skin Korea 100
Korea Marketing News, ≥₩100m earners by company for the 2024 filing year - Atomy 352 members, 0.012% of the registered base; and the 2025 Direct Selling News Global 100 ranking Atomy tenth at US$1.83bn, +7% year on year
Not established by this document: The 2025 Direct Selling News Global 100 ranking placing Atomy tenth at US$1.83bn was not retrieved; DSN's Global 100 listing pages did not surface in search from this session.
- DirectSelling Korea, "다단계 매출 줄었지만, 억대 연봉 1,736명" (11 August 2025) - the same per-company ≥₩100m table
- ATOMY MARKETING PLAN (official PDF on ch.static.atomy.com, June 2024) - dealership classes, Masterships, the 44% general and 20% mastership PV pools, education commission, and the statutory cap language
Official ATOMY MARKETING PLAN PDF (ch.static.atomy.com, June 2024) plus the US, Canadian, European and Korean marketing-plan pages - the verbatim 10,000 cumulative personal PV gate, the five dealership classes, the seven Masterships, the 44% general and 20% mastership PV pools, the 6% education commission, the 35%-of-revenue statutory cap under Article 20 of Korea’s Door-to-Door Sales Act, ₩4,000-per-point N value, point ceilings by level, unlimited accumulation and the application of personal PV to the smaller leg
- Atomy Marketing Plan (official PDF on ch.static.atomy.com, February 2024) - "Commission paid within 35% of total company sales"; "The total commission paid to members is calculated as 70% of the PV earned"; PV worked examples at KRW 88,000 = 44,000 PV
- Atomy Short Compensation Plan (official PDF on ch.static.atomy.com, June 2025) - the verbatim 10,000 cumulative Personal PV gate and the 44% general commission pool
- Atomy Australia - Compensation Plan page (70% of achieved PV settled to commission; total commission not exceeding 35% of branch sales; 44% general commission; 10,000 Personal PV gate; personal PV applied to the smaller leg)
- 뉴스스페이스 (Newsspace), "[The Numbers] 애터미, 매출 1.2조에도 해외법인 자본잠식·특수관계자 대여금 '381억'… 오너家 400억 배당잔치" (25 May 2026) - 2025 net sales ₩1.264tn (+4.5%), operating income ₩201.5bn (15.9% margin), net income ₩152.8bn (+25.0%), ₩40bn dividends in each of 2024 and 2025, Brazil −₩4.4bn / UK −₩4.5bn / Atomy Asia Pacific −₩1.9bn capital impairment, related-party loans ₩38.1bn (+32.6%) to S.A Partners ₩18bn and PLHD Partners ₩20.1bn
Newsspace, 26 and 27 May 2026 - 2025 Korean net sales ₩1.264tn (+4.5%), operating income ₩201.5bn (15.9% margin), net income ₩152.8bn (+25.0%), ₩40bn dividends in each of 2024 and 2025, three overseas subsidiaries in capital impairment at end-2025 (Brazil −₩4.4bn, UK −₩4.5bn, an Asia-Pacific entity −₩1.9bn), related-party loans ₩38.1bn up 32.6% (S.A Partners ₩18bn, PLHD Partners ₩20.1bn) on undisclosed terms
- 뉴스스페이스 (Newsspace), "[이슈&논란] 애터미, 해외법인 자본잠식에 오너家 2년 800억 배당…13개 질의에도 '묵묵부답'" (26 May 2026) - the thirteen written questions put to the company, the company's reply, and the undisclosed terms of the related-party loans
- Atomy Social Media Guideline E-Manual, Version 2.0 (official Atomy PDF) - logo prohibition, ban on selling-intent live video, five-unit cap on stock displays, ban on personal websites and online recruitment, and the prohibition on comparing Atomy with other brands
Atomy Oceania Social Media Regulations v1.0 (official PDF) - logo prohibition, ban on selling-intent messaging, ban on selling livestreams and stock displays, prohibition on false healing claims and on "free gift"/"rebate" recruiting language, and the investigation-cooperation clause carrying possible termination; NEXT ECONOMY for the May 2021 termination for marketplace resale and the Daejeon District Court first-instance and appellate outcomes
Not established by this document: The document retrieved is the Atomy Europe edition (v2.0), not the Atomy Oceania "Social Media Regulations v1.0" the prose names; the Oceania PDF did not surface at any ch.static.atomy.com path found. NEXT ECONOMY's report on the May 2021 termination for marketplace resale and the Daejeon District Court first-instance and appellate outcomes was not retrieved.
- Atomy Global Mall - User Agreement and Atomy Member Ethics Regulation, Article 33 (mass-media advertising prohibitions, ban on reselling via internet or mobile services, ban on random-targeting online recruitment, trademark and logo restrictions)
- 내일신문, "지난해 다단계판매 시장 매출액 감소" (1 July 2026) - KFTC 2025-year industry disclosure: 112 registered operators, total sales ₩4.5141tn (−0.51%), total commissions ₩1.5115tn (+0.11%), 6.95m registered salespersons, 1.10m (15.9%) receiving anything, average ₩1.37m, top 1% at ₩73.42m taking 53.2%, bottom 70% averaging ₩86,000
Korea Fair Trade Commission 2025-year industry disclosure published July 2026, via Aju Business Daily and the Seoul Metropolitan Government economy bulletin - 112 registered multi-level companies, ₩4.5141tn total sales, ₩1.5115tn total commissions, 6.95m registered salespersons of whom about 15.9% received anything, and a bottom 70% averaging ₩86,000 for the year
Not established by this document: The Aju Business Daily and Seoul Metropolitan Government economy-bulletin write-ups of the July 2026 release were not located; the three Korean outlets cited carry the identical KFTC figures. The KFTC's own July 2026 press release page (with the .hwp and .xlsx attachments) did not resolve to a stable nttSn URL from search.
- NEXT ECONOMY, "2025 다단계판매 4조 5141억원…매출은 주춤, 업체 수는 반등" (2 July 2026) - the same KFTC release, with the statutory basis at Article 13(6) of the Door-to-Door Sales Act and the disclosure route (공정위 홈페이지 → 정보공개 → 사업자정보공개 → 다단계판매사업자)
- SR타임스, "작년 다단계판매원 695만명…상위 10개사 비중 77%" (1 July 2026) - Korea Amway and Atomy leading the top ten at about 77% of market sales and 73% of registered salespersons
What we could not get
- The KFTC per-rank (직급별) average-commission table for Atomy specifically. The regulator’s company-detail pages are robots-blocked and could not be retrieved, so every Atomy-specific KFTC figure in this report - the 88.1%, the 85.3%, the 352 members at ≥₩100m, the ₩924,000 average - is as reported by Korean press citing the filings rather than read directly off the KFTC record. The figures are consistent across multiple independent outlets and across filing years, which is why they are used; they are not primary-source reads, which is why this note is first
- The Korean-won cost of 10,000 PV in the domestic market. Korean product-level PV data requires a member login, so the ~$18 gate figure is derived solely from US store pricing and may not hold in Korea
- Whether any income disclosure exists behind a member login for the United States, Canada or Europe. None is published anywhere publicly, which is the test that matters for a prospect - but non-existence cannot be proved
- The Sales Master qualification figure. The English plan pages state "2.5 million Group PV under each leg," which at the measured PV ratios is only about US$4,400 of volume per leg - implausibly low for a rank sharing a 10% company-wide pool. This is almost certainly a transcription error for a figure two orders of magnitude larger. It is reported as published and should not be relied on
- Whether Park Han-gil or family members hold equity in Kolmar BNH or Korea Kolmar. No filing confirming or excluding a cross-shareholding was located, which leaves an open related-party question over the entire supply chain
- The outcome of the Daejeon Regional Tax Office examination opened December 2024, and the respondents in two KFTC decisions surfaced in search (약식2020-058 and 의결2015-202) which could not be confirmed as Atomy matters and should not be assumed to be
- The exact list of impaired overseas subsidiaries - two source reports disagree on one of the three entities - plus Atomy’s 2025 domestic-versus-overseas revenue split, its current global member count (the widely repeated "15 million" traces only to a social-media post), and how it structures compensation in China, its largest overseas market, to comply with Chinese direct-selling licensing rules
- Whether the 6% education commission is paid to company-owned or member-owned education centers and whether members pay to attend; BBB complaint volumes for Atomy America Inc.; Atomy America’s US Direct Selling Association membership status; and a like-for-like millilitre-per-dollar comparison for the Absolute Skincare Set against a named premium Korean set
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
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Atomy - frequently asked
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QWhy is Atomy graded C− rather than higher or lower?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Atomy’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
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