Gracie Tullio (1:21)

Today I want to talk about some of my favorite K beauty products.

David Kentucky (1:24)

Today I'm going to be sharing with you all of my top K beauty products. But what is K Beauty exactly?

Gracie Tullio (1:30)

Made in Korea, popular in Korea, based in Korea.

David Kentucky (1:33)

At first glance, it might seem straightforward Korean beauty brands, but this definition is quickly getting blurred.

Seung Gok Kim (1:39)

I am Finnish and I'm South Korean.

Elisa Aron Pha Kim (1:43)

That's why we have this identity crisis. Our brand also has this identity crisis.

David Kentucky (1:48)

As the demand for K beauty products has increased, more companies based outside of Korea are joining the glow game. But this smudging of lines has opened up the market to a serious problem.

Mark Lee (1:59)

Out of 29, 26 of them were fake. So that's a 90% counterfeit rate.

David Kentucky (2:04)

A potentially dangerous threat to customers. So how strong is the K in K Beauty? That's all coming up on Business Daily on the BBC World Service. So today I'm going to be showing you my skincare routine. But first I'm going to get my hairband on because I don't want the hair getting in my eyes and everything. Okay? So warm water. I have a facial wash here, simple face wash. Black tea youth enhancing skin. That's a toner here. Get a little bit on my hand, let it get absorbed. A black tea used enhanced skin lotion. I have a moisturizer here. Moisturizer, soothing cream. And lastly. Well, lastly for me I have a serum here that I'm gonna put on. All right, I. I'm ready. So this is what I've been doing most of my life. The way I was taught by my own Korean mother. Not as often as she would like, but it turns out this routine or regimen is a key part of Korean skincare.

Anne Majeski (3:27)

Skincare regimens are very elaborate and multi step. You can have as many as 10 skincare steps in your beauty regimen.

David Kentucky (3:36)

This is Anne Majeski, director of retail relationship with Soulceuticals.

Anne Majeski (3:40)

It's generally a multi step regimen that includes cleansing, sometimes double cleansing, once with an oil cleanser, once with a water cleanser. Toning using serums, maybe multiple serums depending on what skin care goals are. Essences, which are kind of like a water based serum that might be sprayed on over that. Moisturizers, masks and then sometimes oils.

David Kentucky (4:07)

K Beauty began its global rise in the early 2010s with BB blemish balm cream leading the way. The trend grew before exploding in 2017 with the introduction of the 10 step Korean skincare routine. Total K Beauty exports went from US$650 million in 2011 to $4 billion in 2017, a six fold increase in just over six years. And the industry kept growing. According to Korea Food and Drug Administration, KFDA Korean cosmetic industry was valued at almost US$14 billion last year with $10 billion being exports.

Anne Majeski (4:44)

It has been extremely successful. We expect to do over about 14 million sales in 2025. And we've seen global acceptance. We've recently started selling in India, Latin America, Europe and Australia.

David Kentucky (5:00)

But here's the twist. Seoul Suitical is not a Korean company. When you go on Seoul Suitical website, it certainly looks with Seoul written in big bold Korean letters with an East Asian looking model holding their products with colors and designs that feel Korean. But nowhere in the page does it say they are Korean. It describes itself as bringing Korean skincare to the market. In fact, they are based in America and manufacture their products in America. An American company. The website does however feature a page titled really Korean Saying? It's one of the most common questions they're asked.

Anne Majeski (5:37)

I think we were a little more sensitive about it when we were first starting it because we wanted to be very transparent that the products are made in the U.S. i think that what we were seeing that allowed us to identify it as K beauty were a couple of things. The ingredients. I think the key to a lot of the popularity of K Beauty is in the ingredients. And these are in many cases traditional ingredients that have been used in Korean beauty products for a long time. Things like snail mucin, centella asiatica, green tea, turmeric, rice bran, ginseng. I think the, the second foundation that important to K Beauty is in the kind of philosophy, it's a comprehensive, kind of a holistic approach to skin care.

David Kentucky (6:25)

So when a customer looks at a product and it says K beauty. So that's what they were expecting, that whole regimen, the holistic approach to the beauty. So that word has power, the K beauty itself.

Anne Majeski (6:38)

Yes.

David Kentucky (6:38)

What stops a given brand from just saying K Beauty?

Anne Majeski (6:43)

I think the consumer is fairly sophisticated. If you just say you're a K beauty brand, I think they are looking for some kind of proof of that. And I think that you need to at least acknowledge some key ingredients.

David Kentucky (6:59)

So for you as a brand, the proof is in the ingredients?

Anne Majeski (7:01)

That's correct. And we, we source our key ingredients in Korea because we wanted to be able to legitimately say we are a K beauty brand.

David Kentucky (7:12)

Not everyone would agree with this.

Seung Gok Kim (7:14)

So the first thing that I am thinking now is that the products should mostly be manufactured by a Korean manufacturer. And that doesn't just mean using Korean ingredients, but it also means the products are made with Korean expertise and know how.

David Kentucky (7:28)

Meet Seung Gok Kim. He and his wife Elisa Aron Pha Kim co founded Hwarangpu. Although they are based in Finland, all of their team except Elisa are Koreans and they manufacture their cosmetic products in South Korea.

Elisa Aron Pha Kim (7:41)

On the market you will find a lot of brands that were made by Koreans who live abroad. And maybe they don't even promote themselves as Korean brands. Then we have brands that are made fully by foreigners. Even Lancome and Clinique, they manufacture their products in Korea and Japan. But then it doesn't make those brands Japanese and Korean. So that's why we have this identity crisis. Because we are a Finnish Korean family and we are sure our baby will at one point have an identity crisis. Because you know, Finnish are very light skinned and then her Korean is completely different looking and now she looks very mixed as well. Yeah, she's cute. But our brand also has this identity crisis because everything, starting from the images, our team, everything is Korean and everyone but all the Korean team members we have, they are currently in Finland and all of Them have actually have gone through similar experience of having an identity crisis while moving here.

David Kentucky (8:45)

For the couple, there is one element of K Beauty that is not up for discussion.

Seung Gok Kim (8:49)

The most important thing that we both absolutely agree is that the branch basically should develop its concept and ideas and products with a Korean perspective. That can come through in the ingredients, the design or cultural elements. Basically anything that clearly connects to the brands, to Korea, or at least reflects a Korean influence.

David Kentucky (9:12)

They do lean heavily on Korean culture. The brand's name, Hwarang, for example, refers to the elite warrior youths in the ancient Korean kingdom of Silla. But it still doesn't answer the question of what K Beauty is beyond philosophy and culture. So I decided to speak to someone who might have an idea. This is Chang Nam Jang, chairman of K Beauty Industry association, the only K beauty organization officially approved by the South Korean government.

BBC Podcast Announcer (9:42)

K Beauty began as one genre of K culture or Korean culture, so K pop, K drama, K food. But it became something of its own thing 10 years or so ago. And we define K Beauty as everything that strives to holistically create human beauty.

David Kentucky (10:01)

You can say that effort is universal in all beauty industry. What puts the K in K Beauty?

BBC Podcast Announcer (10:08)

It's literally Korean beauty. So a company that's registered in Korea and officially tested and approved by Korea Food and Drug Admin, the kfda, it has stricter regulation for certain ingredients. At the end of the day, it's determined by the consumers. If the product is developed in a way that suits the climate and the environment of Korea, and is recognized as a viable product in the Korean market, then we would acknowledge it as K Beauty. And we believe that the KFDA's regulations reflects the Korean market's needs.

David Kentucky (10:40)

Hwarangpum, the Finnish Korean skincare company you heard from earlier, decided to do exactly that.

Seung Gok Kim (10:46)

Basically, in order to sell the products in Korea, you need to have a chicken palm milk. I don't know how to call it English.

Elisa Aron Pha Kim (10:54)

Responsible person.

Seung Gok Kim (10:55)

Responsible person? Yeah. In order to be a responsible person, then you should get the training every single year and you pass the test. Basically, consumers should think that this is Korean beauty. And what we are trying to achieve is that we should be perceived or recognized by Korean customers. As this is a Korean brand that.

Elisa Aron Pha Kim (11:16)

Is popular in Korea.

David Kentucky (11:17)

And because you believe that a test of a true K beauty is being approved by the Korean consumer, selling in Korea is not an option.

Elisa Aron Pha Kim (11:25)

It's a compulsory.

Seung Gok Kim (11:27)

Exactly.

Elisa Aron Pha Kim (11:28)

That's our own task, but our own goal. And we don't even know if it's reachable. Within this lifetime is to be recognized.

Seung Gok Kim (11:36)

By Korean customers who are living in Korea.

David Kentucky (11:39)

So the customers are the ultimate decider on what K Beauty is. But herein lies another challenge. Customers can be fooled.

Mark Lee (11:47)

So actually, 70.8% of all of our survey respondents said they bought the product thinking that this was a real product, but later found out that this was not a real product.

David Kentucky (11:58)

This is Mark Lee, CEO of MarkVision, a brand and intellectual property protection company.

Mark Lee (12:03)

And for a major Korean beauty brand, which I cannot disclose, we recently conducted 29 test purchases across major US marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Walmart. We did 29. And out of 29, 26 of them were fake. So that's a 90% counterfeit rate.

David Kentucky (12:21)

As K beauty market becomes more lucrative, it started attracting counterfeiters. While counterfeits aren't a problem unique to K Beauty, it's made worse by the makeup of its industry. 94% of the K Beauty companies are considered to be small and medium businesses with small capital and human resources for traditional retail. Instead opting for online sales, these K.

Mark Lee (12:44)

Beauty products is more extremely geared towards younger generation understanding or discovering these products on social media. So I think that pattern would have been reinforced. I mean, last year in 2024, we took down about $280 million worth of K Beauty fake products across all the marketplaces, social media, fake websites and all that. And then on Black Friday, just in the US marketplaces, we were able to find and take down 16,500 counterfeit K Beauty products just in that Black Friday weekend.

David Kentucky (13:20)

The K Beauty association says it has more than 13,000 registered and approved beauty companies in Korea alone. And with hundreds of new companies being registered and going out of business every single day, it becomes very difficult to track what authentic K Beauty products are. So what's the solution?

Gracie Tullio (13:37)

It was a kind of shared frustration about not being able to access the products that we'd fallen in love with that we bought in Korea. And shopping online for K Beauty was a really, really scary experience.

David Kentucky (13:49)

This led Gracie Tullio to set up Pure Soul, a K beauty retail store in the uk. So do you have experience with buying counterfeit before you started your business?

Gracie Tullio (14:00)

I think I. When I first got back from Korea, after I'd gone through my stash, my original stash, I 100% bought a fake Missha BB cream. Not on Purp. There's nothing purposeful about that purchase. I thought it was genuine, but having had the original one still in my makeup bag, I knew that the product that I bought, when I put them side by side. It just wasn't matching. And that experience is not unique to me. In fact, sometimes we even have customers and they come in very sheepishly and they say, oh, I'm really sorry, I usually buy this serum from you, but I was in a pickle and I bought it on Amazon. Can you just have a look at this box and let me know if it's real or not? And we'll get it out, we'll lay it on the counter and right on the back it will have in really big black letters that is made in China. And then we have to have the really uncomfortable conversation with them that explains to them that that is not a real product and that they should not open the box. It's something that even our customers can be sometimes tempted by. That lower price is really interesting to them and it comes up in a very easy, accessible way and it's so tempting for them just to give it a go and see. And nine times out of ten it's not real. It's a counterfeit good product.

David Kentucky (15:11)

Her advice is to buy from a reputable retailer. Assuming you have a genuine product, how do you know if it is K Beauty?

Gracie Tullio (15:19)

Our customers, at least a very specific portion of them are more than ever very aware of what's trending in Korea. They're following Korean influencers, they're checking global and domestic ranking charts. They have a lot of emphasis on purchasing products that feel very authentically Korean in that they're doing well within the domestic market. So for us that's definitely a shift in focus. We want to look and work with brands who are doing well within Korea and that authenticity to the creation is very important to us.

David Kentucky (15:53)

So it's not where it's made, it's not who makes it, it's where it's popular.

Gracie Tullio (15:58)

But equally though, all those brands are made in Korea. Absolutely. I think I just want to make that very clear that that's definitely a non negotiable for us. It has to be made in Korea and it will be actually very interesting to see how because I know More Pacific is a factory in the us I'm assuming that those products would have to stay made in USA on them. I'll be very interested to see how the market responds to a K Beauty product that is popular in Korea, that is made in the US for them. I think we're in a very interesting time now where that definition is going to have to start to get really flexible and we're going to see it.

David Kentucky (16:31)

Stretched and bent and this flexible definition resonates with Saunder Junyoung, founder of yeppodak, a K beauty brand based in Germany.

Saunder Junyoung (16:40)

To be honest, it's a more personal story for me. So I grew up half Korean, half Dutch. And then people in the Netherlands say, oh, are you Dutch? No, you're not Dutch in Korea, Are you Korean? So for me, it's a story of my life. And if people ask that question about what makes a pizza that you eat in London, Italian, it's kind of the philosophy, it's kind of the ingredients that are being used to make the pizza Italian, I think this goes for K Beauty as well.

David Kentucky (17:05)

I can totally empathize with you. I mean, even though I'm Korean, even then in Korea, I'm not sure if you're familiar with this term. A black haired foreigner. Yeah, like that's what I am. Exactly. Yeah. And here they were, where are you really from? And all that stuff. Yeah, exactly.

Saunder Junyoung (17:19)

So this is that question what we're also getting. And I think for yeppoda, it's the same.

David Kentucky (17:22)

Yeppoda manufactures their products in Korea, but not for the prestigious K Beauty title.

Saunder Junyoung (17:27)

So for us, actually we don't focus so much on those keywords, maybe just as a background. Because when we started five years ago in Italy, everyone would say, hey, why would you start kind of with your K beauty narrative in Italy? For us, K Beauty is a part of our story, to tell our story, where our products come from. And we as a business, we see that the innovation is happening in Korea. So if you go to the laboratories in Korea, if you go to the manufacturing sites in Korea, that's where the innovation is happening and that's where kind of the new products are coming out of. And that's why we develop and we manufacture our products in Korea. And that's kind of what defines it as K Beauty for us.

David Kentucky (18:05)

So what do you think? Are you savvy enough to spot not only authentic but genuine K Beauty products? Get in touch with the program. Our email address is businessdailybc.co.uk. as for me, I'm going to put on my Korean sunscreen from my latest haul. And thank you for listening to today's episode of Business Daily, produced and presented by me, David Kentucky. Thank you for listening.