Yonghwan

Editor, Korea Glow Notes. Korea-based. Reads Olive Young and Glowpick so you don't have to.

Background

I live in Korea and have been buying K-beauty products at Olive Young and Daiso for more than a decade. Long before Korean skincare became a global category, I was reading Korean review platforms daily — the same ones locals actually cross-check before buying: Olive Young Global, Glowpick, and the various Korean beauty communities. That habit, plus the growing gap between what viral overseas coverage recommended and what my Korean friends and I actually bought again, is what led to Korea Glow Notes.

Why this site exists

Korean shoppers have a ratings ecosystem overseas readers can't see. Olive Young Global reviews are gated behind a Korean login, Glowpick is Korean-only and not indexed by Google, and Daiso's ratings are on the Daiso Mall app that's hard to browse from outside Korea. Meanwhile Western coverage of K-beauty is dominated by TikTok viral picks and PR-heavy roundups. The result: overseas shoppers spend real money on products that are trending on Instagram but that Korean shoppers have already learned are mediocre. I built Korea Glow Notes to close that gap — one review at a time, grounded in numbers rather than hype.

How I work

I decide which products to cover based on category importance and whether we have enough rating data to say anything defensible. For each review, product data (price, ingredients, format) and Korean consumer sentiment (aggregated ratings across Olive Young Global, Daiso Mall, and Glowpick) are pulled from public sources. A large language model drafts the summary and verdict from that structured input, and every draft passes an automated factual-consistency check — every number in the published text must appear in the source data — before I let it go live. Reviews I'm not confident in never publish.

I do not accept payment for coverage, do not accept gifted product, and do not do sponsored posts. Everything I recommend I would recommend to a friend visiting Korea.

What I actually use

My personal skin is combination, breakout-prone in summer, dry across the cheeks in winter. Products I keep in my own bathroom aren't always the products I write about — I cover what the aggregate says is worth reviewing, not what I personally love — but my familiarity with these categories in real Korean drugstores informs the framing. When I flag a caveat in a review ("Korean reviewers with oily skin often report ___"), it's because I've seen that pattern show up repeatedly in the platforms I read.

Contact

Corrections and story tips are welcome via the contact page. I read every message. If you're a brand or PR representative: I don't accept product for review, but I'm happy to correct factual errors about your products — please point me at the specific claim and the source you'd like me to check.