Demand for K-beauty products internationally blossomed alongside the country’s cultural wave, known as “Hallyu” in Korean, in the late 1990s, when South Korean television shows started gaining popularity in Asia. Over the past decade, musical acts like BTS and Blackpink, television shows like “Squid Game” and this year’s summer blockbuster, “KPop Demon Hunters,” have vaulted the country’s cultural exports to new heights of global popularity.

The sector isn’t dominated by one or two players, said Kwon Yoo-jin, a professor of apparel and fashion studies at Korea National Open University. “K-beauty itself is a cultural brand,” she said.

As global audiences get a window into life in South Korea through movies and television shows, they are introduced to the age-defying skin of Korean celebrities, as well as the country’s cosmetic products and elaborate skin care routines.

The country’s skin care industry is highly competitive. South Koreans spend more on beauty products per capita than residents of any other country in the world. However, trends come and go quickly, creating opportunities for start-up brands to break through with new ingredients or technologies.

For decades, Amorepacific, a South Korean beauty conglomerate, has infused natural Asian ingredients into cosmetics. To this day, their researchers study the best ways to cultivate ginseng, a notoriously fickle plant.

The pearl of the ginseng plant is a chemical component called saponin, which helps with anti-aging. The company’s researchers devote themselves to maximizing and optimizing the saponin through countless experiments. Studies of ginseng date back thousands of years in Asia, but many aspects of the plant remain a mystery.

Read the full story here.

Excerpts from the story by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Jin Yu Young.

Commissioned and published by The New York Times.

November 2025

Photographed in Gangwondo-do, Gyeonggi-do, and Seoul, South Korea