Skincare Korean Beauty Secrets

For the first twenty-one years of my life, I was the quintessential L.A. girl. I had a year-round tan and blond highlights and lived in flip-flops. I wore cutoff shorts from Abercrombie & Fitch and sipped on vanilla milkshakes with my burger and fries, and naturally, I worshipped the beach. As soon as I could drive, I was cruising my parents' sedan to the mall, where I went shopping with the extra cash I made working as a cashier at a sushi restaurant.

When it came to beauty, I was self-taught, influenced by magazines and what I saw on the people around me. In high school, I cut asymmetrical layers in my hair and leaned over the bathroom sink to paint on chunky blond streaks with boxed drugstore dye kits. At one point, I may or may not have had a bad perm (I definitely had a perm, though how bad it was depended on whom you asked). When it came to makeup, I was definitely not going for the natural look. Instead, I opted for exaggerated heavy black eyeliner and overly tweezed eyebrows in an attempt to get that thin, Angelina Jolie–esque arch.

With my part-time job, I had the luxury to splurge on what I considered my beauty essentials: eye shadow palettes, liquid liners, juicy lip glosses, and bronzer to make my sun-kissed glow shimmer. My mom nagged me to put on sunscreen, but alas, I didn't listen. Tan was in, so instead of SPF, I'd slather on coconut-scented accelerator to make sure I got the most out of all the hours I spent at the beach.

Spaghetti with a Side of Kimchi

As a second-generation Korean kid (born and raised in California by Korean parents), I grew up straddling both worlds. Spaghetti nights had kimchi on the side. We celebrated New Year's on January 1 and then again for Lunar New Year. I spoke English at school but Korean at home. During my weekly ballet class, I wore the classic pink tutu, but come Saturday at Korean school, I ran around in circles waving colorful traditional buchaes with all the other second-gen kids who were just like me.

On occasion, and usually on Saturdays after Korean school, my mom would drag me to the local Korean-style spa, where we stood around naked with a bunch of strangers. My older sister, Michelle, relished the whole bathhouse experience, but I was not having it. The communal nudity just made me self-conscious—my barely there boobs were just starting to blossom, so the last thing I wanted to do was put them on display for the world to see.

My mom frequently lectured Michelle and me about the importance of staying out of the sun, moisturizing, and properly cleansing our faces. My older sister was much more into Korean culture than I was (she loved her Kpop boy bands) and followed dutifully, but as the middle child, I went to great lengths to do the opposite. I was determined to blaze my own trail, and going to sleep without moisturizing my face—or even (gasp!) washing it—was my forte.

My no-care skin-care regimen wasn't worth much—no surprise there—and I was a sophomore in high school when I started to get acne. There's a Korean saying that an onset of acne is a clear indication that someone has a crush, so when my dad would see my pimple-populated forehead, he would tease, “So . . . what boy were you thinking of today?”

I did have a boyfriend (shh!), so I became superstitious that my face was betraying me in some way and decided it was time to invest in some “skin care.” At the local drugstore, I grabbed a bottle of the bright orange acne wash that all my friends used. We knew it was good stuff because it left your skin so tight and dry that smiling was almost painful. After a few weeks, when things weren't improving, I bought Oxy Pads, which left behind a strong burning sensation when you swiped them across your skin. As my friends said: If it stung, it was clearly working.

Needless to say, my segue into skin care abruptly stalled here. It was more trouble than it was worth, and if I had to sting and burn to fight my acne into submission, I was willing to declare defeat. Skin care was just too complicated—no one I knew seemed to know anything about it, nor did they really care to find out. My mother possessed near-perfect skin even in middle age, but I didn't think to ask her because, as all teenage girls know, moms don't know anything!

Laziness also played a huge factor in my nonchalance. Why would I obsess over perfecting my skin if I could just use concealer, foundation, and a compact for a quick fix? It was far easier to spackle makeup over my blemishes than it was to make them go away. I also had the mentality that skin care was for old people, and I still had decades before I had to worry about wrinkles.

With time on my side, I put my money toward the latest “it” perfume instead, and all my friends were on the same page. With all the lip gloss and fragrance we were buying, skin care simply didn't fit into our budget, but man, did we smell good.

My skin-care game improved when I went away to college, but it turned out that it only lasted for a hot second. I was making tips as a waitress at an upscale restaurant and decided to use my newfound cash flow to dabble in expensive skin-care products. But I wasn't any less lazy; it was just that Bloomingdale's was right next door and I had money to blow. I was overwhelmed with the choices at the cosmetics counter, while a well-meaning saleswoman with her own skin issues admitted that she didn't really know what to recommend to me either. Most of her customers were women in their thirties and forties who suddenly wanted a miracle cream to get rid of crow's-feet or lift up what gravity had brought down. But I was only twenty-two, with just the vague idea that I should be taking better care of my skin. I finally walked out with an eighty-dollar bottle of toner, because my “common sense” told me that at that price, it just had to be good for my skin, even if I didn't know exactly what it was for.

With my new toner and moisturizer, and the occasional splurge (facials at a hotel spa), I felt as if I really knew how to take care of my skin, especially when I compared myself with other girls my age, who were spending their time in makeup aisles picking up the latest mascara or focusing on how their butts looked in the latest brand of designer jeans. But really, who could blame them? Why should we worry about our skin? We didn't have a wrinkle in sight!

As much as I had made the most out of living my teenage years in California, as a young adult, my beach-and-burgers existence had lost most of its charm. College felt like an extension of high school, and I started to regret sticking around my hometown. I was bored with the perfect weather, the tract housing with the same orange-yellow paint for miles, and all the strip malls. So I put my blackhead-ridden nose to the grindstone and graduated from college in just three years. I knew I had to get the hell out of there.

Skin Culture in Seoul

After I graduated, I began working at a boutique advertising agency in Orange County, but I remained on high alert for something else. An earlier trip to Seoul, the capital of South Korea and my parents' hometown, had inspired a severe case of wanderlust, and almost as soon as I got home, I was desperate to go back. I was convinced that I could claw my way to a career in Seoul and set about networking with people who had advertising connections in Korea, because ideally I wanted to live abroad there and work on my career at the same time. On a whim, I responded to an ad in a Korean English-language news daily, and just when I had almost forgotten about it, an interview request from Samsung landed in my inbox. A few weeks later, I found myself in Samsung's Houston, Texas, headquarters in front of three company VPs who seemed to think I was perfect for the international public relations job. I remember asking them timidly if my Korean “fluency” would be an issue. To my relief, they said that Samsung was such a global company, with many bilingual colleagues, that there wouldn't be a problem. Since I would be handling all international PR projects, English would be the main language.

I honestly think I landed the job because they were impressed that I paid for college by myself and finished in three years, whereas in Korea it's the custom for parents to financially care for their children until they're married, right up to paying for the wedding. Never in a million years did I think this would lead to a job offer halfway around the world, but that's exactly what happened: They wanted me to come work in Seoul. When I realized the opportunity I was just granted with this one-way ticket, I was ecstatic. In addition to what it could mean for my career, I saw this as a chance to explore the neighborhoods my parents grew up in and to eat delicious and cheap Korean food whenever I felt like it. Aside from the anticipation of filling my stomach with bibimbap, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

When I told my parents about my plans, it would be an understatement to say that my mom and dad were confused. They'd made a lot of sacrifices in leaving Korea, and they both spent several lonely, non-English-speaking years in the United States, all in the name of creating better opportunities for the children they didn't even have yet. And then here I was, more than three decades later, dropping everything to go back to the country they thought they'd left behind for good.

I was warned that Seoul was fast-paced and overly competitive, which did concern me—what if I couldn't fit in or didn't excel at my job? Many of my friends told me I'd be homesick and predicted that I'd have a hard time meeting people. I had an aunt, uncle, and cousins (whom I hardly knew) in Korea, and when my parents let them know I was coming, they balked, saying, “Why would she come to Korea when she's got it good in America?” But in spite of all this, I couldn't have been more excited. I was convinced that the years I'd spend in Seoul—under the flashing karaoke lights, over the smoky haze of grilled pork, and on the trails along the Han River—would be the best of my life.

As I packed for my adventure, I daydreamed about being courted by a native Korean boy who had really good hair. I was certain our relationship would be a clandestine one, since he would undoubtedly turn out to be the son of a wealthy chairman and owner of Korea's largest chaebol (the term for “business conglomerate”). I plotted how I would battle my evil future mother-in-law so that the love her son and I had would triumph. It would be just like the Korean TV dramas.

When I first stepped off the plane in Seoul into a sea of shiny, black-haired heads, I had never felt more at home. The Korea my parents had left behind was a country lifting itself out of poverty, but by the time I arrived, it was a ball of energy that had sprouted concrete jungles seemingly overnight. Seoul buzzed along, fueled by the big hopes and dreams of millions of people determined to achieve them. There were endless alleys to explore, an entire culture to digest, and a plethora of welcoming cafés where I could sit and people watch. I'd expected some of this, but soon realized that my hunger wasn't just for endless Korean BBQ, but an entirely new perspective.

Then reality hit.

While I was Korean in Orange County, I was definitely American in Seoul, and I was about to experience my first bout of culture shock. I was twenty-two years old, with a beach tan, chunky highlights, and the Korean language skills of a three-year-old. I quickly found out that my semiconversational Korean was rudimentary at best.

I remember my first day at work. It was February, the dead of winter, and after navigating through the rush hour subway commute in stockings and really pinchy heels, I was pretty lost. I finally stumbled upon the correct building and was escorted by HR to meet my boss. I sat alone in a meeting room, and a man who looked a little younger than my father walked in. His name was Mr. Hong, and the respectful way to address him was Hong Boo-Jang-Nim, which meant Senior Manager Hong. In Korean, he asked, “Do you speak Korean?” I said, “A little.” Then he said to me, “Well, welcome to the hong-bo team.” “Um,” I asked meekly, “what is hong-bo?”

“Hong-bo means public relations,” he explained. The department he headed up. The department I would be working in. Aw, crap. And there went my chance of making a good impression. I could tell that Mr. Hong was concerned.

It turned out that despite what my interviewers had assured me, most of the hong-bo team did not speak English fluently, and my new colleagues were as scared about meeting me as I was about meeting them.

In California, I'd spent so much time in the sun that most people in Seoul assumed I was Southeast Asian, and at work, I was my team's first international hire. When I arrived, I think we were all surprised by just how much I didn't fit in: They had no idea what to do with me.

But I was determined to make the most of my time in Seoul and knew that I had to adapt to the city, since it wasn't going to adapt to me. It wasn't long before I was taking all the new experiences in stride. It helped that my coworkers immediately took me under their wing: My female colleagues treated me like I was their long-lost cousin—a cousin who just happened to have been raised by wolves. (Side note: Despite this rocky start, Mr. Hong and I went on to work so well together that he became a crucial partner of Soko Glam after he retired from Samsung as a sangmoonim, aka vice president.)

The people in my office teased me because I had messy, unbrushed hair, and I was met with blank stares when I tried to explain that I'd been going for the boho, beachy waves look. They thought I was barbaric because I didn't use essence in my skin-care regimen, and laughed with me (or at me?) when I admitted that I didn't even know what it was. When they asked me if I had ever been to a bathhouse or exfoliated, I opted for the easy way out and just lied. I've been recently, I said, even though the truth was that I hadn't stepped inside a Korean spa since puberty.

In passing, my coworkers would say, and rather bluntly, “I could see your dark circles from way over there,” or “What is growing out of your skin?” My favorite, because it seemed to come from a place of genuine anguish about my well-being: “Please brush your hair.”

Asian families tend to be very blunt and won't think twice about telling you you're getting fat or that you need to get a boyfriend, so rather than being offended by it, I was used to this well-intentioned rudeness, and it got me thinking about my skin. Also, since diving right into Korean culture, I'd become addicted to the soap-operatic dramas on television, and I'll admit, I was (still am) shallow enough to be influenced by the actresses. Their faces were flawless, even when I watched them in HD!

MY TOP FIVE FAVORITE KDRAMAS

•  My Love from Another Star
• Answer Me 1997
• Answer Me 1994
• Full House
• Coffee Prince

As I spent more time with my coworkers outside the office, I found out many of my female colleagues looked far younger than they actually were, and even my male colleagues seemed to know more about skin care than I did. It wasn't unusual for a super manly guy to have a bottle of SPF and some hand cream at his desk, and almost everyone had their own personal humidifier to keep the cold winter air from drying out their skin. The rows of cubicles were as dewy as the rain forest room at the zoo, and so were the faces. More than just dewy—they were glowing.

Outside the office, skin-care culture was just as prevalent. Every street corner in Seoul was lined with cosmetics shops—no, really, you can stand at an intersection in Myeong-dong and see the same stores every which way you turn. On my daily walk home from work, I'd pass dozens of windows filled with creams and treatments, and entering through the doors was like walking into a candy shop of mysteries. There were remedies for everything, from treating dark circles, to reducing breakouts along the chin, to CC creams that made you look flawless and natural while protecting your skin, to little gel caps that you could smooth out over your nose to get rid of blackheads. I pored through dozens of sheet masks made with rice, royal jelly, or even fermented yeast! These at-home spa facials in a packet were less than the cost of a subway ride, and they were made even more enticing by their cute and sophisticated packaging. There were potions and ingredients I'd never heard of before, like creams infused with snail extract to help fade acne scars, or snake venom to plump and firm the skin. Everything was inexpensive, and I'd spend hours in the shops, inspired to try different formulas and test the various concoctions. Even when I had a bagful of new products in my hand, I still had a list in my head of what I wanted to try next.

With so many brands and products offered, I zoned in on trying to find the best and pestered my Korean friends about their skin-care routines and the products that achieved the best results for them. I dug for information myself, going through Korean beauty blogs and watching my new favorite program, a beauty-dedicated cable show called Get It Beauty, which seemed to always be on in the background wherever I was. I also had teachers and allies in the shop clerks, who, despite being younger than me (or were they?), were incredibly knowledgeable about skin-care products and techniques.

The fact that skin was a priority was apparent in many day-to-day interactions. On an elevator ride up to my apartment, I eavesdropped as an older man greeted the lady standing next to me. He said to her in Korean, “Your skin looks amazing today!”

As much as I could with my peripheral vision, I examined this so-called amazing skin, which really was dewy and bright and belonged to a woman who looked to be in her late twenties, even though she could have been decades older. Her skin was so flawless and poreless, almost perfect, and her reaction showed just how much pride she took in her complexion. Her eyes widened with pleasure and she giggled at the compliment, her hand politely covering her mouth.

There were two takeaways from observing this interaction in the elevator. First, the fact that he even noticed her skin was mind-boggling. What American man would have? Second, her reaction was pure bliss. She might as well have won the lottery.

After that elevator incident, I began to notice beautiful skin everywhere I turned. So many faces I saw were silky and even. I envied how fresh and dewy they looked and wondered what these women did to keep their skin from being dull or flaky.

I know what you're thinking right now, because I thought it, too: It's genes, dummy. They're all born with it! But the skeptic in me was silenced every time I looked in the mirror: I was full-blooded Korean, and I was as dull and flaky as a potato. I knew I needed to start taking active steps to take care of my skin, even overhaul my regimen if needed.

Four weeks after landing in Korea, I had my own humidifier at my desk, and instead of looking forward to a glass of wine after work, I found myself genuinely excited about going home and washing my face. You know what they say: When in Seoul, do as the Koreans do.