Taiwanese Beauty: The 10-Step South Korean Routine

I’m an idiot and this blog is a correction/addition to this previous blog on beauty in Taiwan. As it turns out, there’s a definite obsession with skincare in this country. Mostly with South Korean products that make up an insane 10-step beauty routine. That’s right: 10 STEPS. Normal people agree that this is a bit excessive, but South Korean women currently have the highest life expectancy in the world, so maybe they’re on to something.

If you break it down into something more manageable, the 10 steps can be grouped into three main segments: cleanse, tone and moisturize. That's not too bad, right? These three basic steps are what most women around the world do anyway. South Koreans just complicate things by using multiple products for one step. For example, a proper South Korean regime uses three different cleansers: an oil cleanser, foam cleanser and exfoliator. Excessive much?

Popular brands can be found at Ximending, which is Taiwan’s one stop shop for South Korean beauty. The larger chains (The Face Shop, Innisfree, Skin Food, Tony Moly, Nature Republic and Etude House) all have stand-alone shops within walking distance of each other. In my opinion, Innisfree is the best of these; and they surpassed all the other companies in at-home sales for the year 2016, so they’re definitely a safe place to start.

Ximending is also home to Taipei's largest Watsons (Taiwan’s upscale CVS), which is where you can find brands like: Banilo Co, Missha and My Beauty Diary. Another popular cosmetics store located nearby is 86 Shop. This store carries cheaper brands, including Cremorlab and Neogen. In addition to finding products in store, you can also order popular brands online from PC Store (Taiwan’s version of Amazon) and Wish Trend. If you want to try Klairs or COSRX, this is where you will have to look.

With so much variety, you can definitely pick and choose what you want to try. Personally, I was overwhelmed at all the options and immediately went into research mode to find out what the interwebs had to say about all of this. It gave me such a headache, but I now have a nice little organized spreadsheet on Korean skincare. Here’s the condensed version:

Step	Top Products
1. Oil Cleanser	Clean It Zero by Banila Co
2. Foam Cleanser	Volcanic Pore Cleansing Foam by Innisfree
3. Exfoliator (once a week)	Black Sugar Mask by Skinfood
4. Toner	Green Tea Balancing Toner by Innisfree
5. Essence	Time Revolution Essence by Missha
6. Serum	Vitamin C Serum by Klairs
7. Sheet Mask (once a week)	Skin Clinic Mask by Innisfree
8. Eye Cream	(Hahahaha)
9. Face Cream/Moisturizer	Green Tea Balancing Cream by Innisfree
10. SPF	Natural Sun Eco by The Face Shop

I am NOT high maintenance enough for this, so I personalized a plan to only include some of the steps mentioned above. For example, one cleanser should do the job; and I’m going to take a page from Emma Watson’s book and only use sheet masks for special occasions. The strangest thing added to my routine is the serum. These intrigued me, because they are basically just highly concentrated mixtures of something useful for your skin, such as green tea, vitamin C or snail mucin.

After a month, I’m happy to report skin that is smoother, brighter, and more moisturized... That's it. I'm done. No really, I'M FINISHED AND HAVE THROWN MOST OF THE PRODUCTS AWAY. After doing more in-depth research on ingredients, I found that majority of these products contain harmful petroleum-based fillers, such as mineral oil, PEGs and propylene glycol. Even the most highly reviewed serums and exfoliators are not safe to use. To be fair, the safest brand seems to be Innisfree, but they're not perfect either, because they favor PEGs.

In conclusion, Asian skin care has a cult following across the world for a reason: It does make your skin look great. They might even be onto something with the crazy 10-steps, but the products are lacking and not good for long-term care. Naturally, I will NOT continue using them, but this month has not been wasted; I learned what not to put on my skin and that snails produce a highly effective natural skin cream, go figure.