Based on tradition, Koreans only used natural and harsh-free ingredients to create the clear, glowy, and natural-looking skin through multiple generations that made K-Beauty products better and so popular today. Natural Korean makeup can still be made today for people to try at home by making your very own face mask.
Skin care is highly valued in the Korean culture. Korean skincare focuses on prevention, making it more effective than traditional Western beauty techniques. In South Korea, parents teach their children about skin care very early on. Their children quickly learn the importance of cleansers, SPF, and moisturizer.
The technology and the ingredients behind K-beauty are hailed as the most innovative and advanced around, much more so than Western brands – we can thank them for the introduction of BB creams into the Western market in around 2012 after using them for 20+ years.
In Korea, skin is always first. They value skin as being more important than makeup or fashion. Their skin secret is that they are using alternative, animal and natural ingredients that a lot of popular skincare brands hadn't really considered using in the past.
Kuhn said it's also important to keep in mind products formulas vary by country. “Every country really has their own sort of regulatory process,” said Kuhn. “There really is no international board that's overseeing ingredients.” Kuhn said, for the most part, K-Beauty products are safe.
The Use of Natural Ingredients
One of the reasons that Korean skincare stand out is there high use of natural ingredients. And Koreans use ingredients that are not commonly used by other countries. Snail mucus is a popular ingredient in Korean creams and masks and considered to have a lot of benefits.
Get skin care products, including a lotion which makes your skin moist, a primer base (pore cover), a liquid foundation like BB cream, and face powder. You will also need black or brown eyeliner, eye shadows, eyebrow liner, teardrop liner which is kind of a glitter popular among Korean girls, and lip tint.
While Korean skincare relies heavily on ingredients such as snail mucin, rice bran, sea-kelp, and sake, Japanese skincare prioritizes moisturizing and anti-inflammatory ingredients like green-tea, hyaluronic acid, Camellia oil, and Aloe Vera.
This routine is perfect for black women since it involves treating, exfoliating, and applying sunscreen daily. With K-beauty you'll never have to struggle with dull skin tone or dark acne marks. For perfect skin, K-Beauty has come up with an extraordinary lineup specifically for African American women.
It goes a bit like this: a balm or oil cleanser (1), a foaming cleanser (2), an exfoliant (3), a toner (4), an essence (5), an ampoule or serum (6), a sheet mask (7), an eye cream (8), a moisturizer (9), and then either a thicker night cream or sleeping mask or an SPF (10).
When it comes to skincare, Cho says Korean women use “natural skin brighteners such as rice extracts, vitamin C, and licorice, as well as exfoliators. For stubborn brown spots, they will visit the dermatologist to lighten the brown spots using lasers.”
“Glass skin is when your skin is at its very healthiest,” explains Alicia Yoon, founder of Peach & Lily. “In order for skin to appear poreless, luminous, and translucent, so many things have to happen. You can't just be hydrated and look that way. Your skin really needs to be its healthiest in all aspects.
Laneige, Primera Son & Park Beauty, SkinRx Lab, Etude House, Moonshot, Peripera, Son & Park, IOPE, Too Cool for School, Sulwhasoo, Neogen, Klairs, and Missha are some of the most popular Korean skincare brands.
Highlight under your eyebrows with a highlighting makeup pen to make your eyes look big and innocent. Finish the look with your favorite eyeshadow and eyeliner to make you look Korean. Create cat eyes for a classic Korean look. Extend your eyeliner upwards away from your eye to create a dramatic, catlike look.
That's not to say Koreans don't use Korean beauty products at all. There are countless free-standing brick and mortar stores on every other block in Seoul from the likes of Missha, Innisfree, Belif, It's Skin, Laneige, among many others.
The most common skin type among South Korean women was OSNT, followed by DSNT, DRNT, OSNW, ORNT, and DSNW (Fig. 1). The top 4 types accounted for 55.3% of the subjects. Each of the other skin types comprised <10% of the study population.
These Paula's Choice products are all Face Flawless Skin-approved sunscreens for Black skin and other Skin of Color.