Decoding how Korean beauty becomes global business.

Why this site exists

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Most English-language coverage of Korean beauty arrives translated and late. The filings, the trade press and the industry talk that actually explain a deal are in Korean, and by the time they cross over, the interesting part has been flattened into a press release.

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I live in Seoul and read those sources first. This site is what I find in them — the manufacturing capacity behind a launch, the regulation that decides whether a product ships, the thesis behind an acquisition — written for people outside Korea who have to act on it.

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Who's writing

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I'm Inhoo Cho. I spent fourteen years at Nestlé, starting in finance and moving into brand management, then worked across Korean consumer and technology companies including Maeil Dairy and JoongGoNara, with a stretch as CFO along the way. Sitting in the seat where you calculate the cost of someone else's optimism changes how you read an announcement.

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Today I co-run Parallel37, a Seoul consultancy doing brand positioning for Korean beauty SMEs and cross-border trade facilitation, and I advise on cosmetics market linkage for the ITC/KOICA STAR Project. The analysis here comes out of that work rather than from a distance.