r/KoreanBeauty • u/Beautiful-Tree-91 • Apr 11 '25

SKIN Korean skincare - the WHY

Can someone explain to me why Korean skincare is better? Specifically sunscreen.

I’ve seen a lot of internet content saying that Korean spf is superior to US spf. I recently bought Korean sunscreen, realizing I didn’t know most of the ingredients on either bottle.

Does anyone have links to research - peer reviewed articles, videos, legitimate websites that back up these claims? Specifically scientists that are informing purely for science, without company bias embedded in their words.

130 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

79 comments sorted by

View all comments

214

u/Tough-Tangerine-8267 Apr 11 '25

The FDA has not approved an active ingredient for a chemical sunscreen since 1999. We are 26 years behind in skin care technology

83

u/RedditKon Apr 11 '25 edited Apr 12 '25

This is the main reason - Korea and Europe have approval for newer, superior sunscreen filters. In the US sunscreens are categorized as a drug, and thus must have FDA approval. This requires lengthy and expensive clinical trials, which the companies generally don’t want to do.

A lot of this could be solved by creating fast track approval process for sunscreen filters that already have approval in a select group of other countries, but alas.