The Best Vegan Korean Beauty Products

We all now Korean Beauty for it’s amazing skincare, innovative formula’s and endless variations of sheetmasks. Even though there’s loads of Kbeauty with snail secretion, bee venom, horse fat and other animal derived ingredients there are loads of vegan options out there too. Honestly they aren’t even hard to find at all but to make the search even easier I created a top 6 of my favorite vegan Korean beauty products for you.

This post was created to celebrate the bill that was passed at the beginning of 2017 which stated that cosmetics manufactured in Korea cannot be tested on Animals anymore! Yay! Now let’s create our vegan friendly Korean beauty routine with these vegan products below:

 The Vegan Glow Mild Foam Cleanser

Mild Foam Cleanser

The Vegan Glow Mild Foam Cleanser is possibly the most efficient, safest and mildest foam cleanser ever made. All ingredients are awarded green safety levels by the Environmental Working Group for you to enjoy awesome skincare without worrying about known health concerns. Formulated at an optimal pH level of 5.5 and no fragrance makes this product a perfect match for even the most sensitive skin types.

 Klairs Rich Moist Soothing Serum

Adding moisture and calming your skin is not only important for dry skintypes. All skintypes including oily / acne prone skintypes should not skip out on a moisturizing step! If your moisturizing step is more focused on soothing and healing your acne try a lightweight moisturizing essence or serum to make sure you won’t suffer from lack of moisture. Klairs Rich Moist Soothing Serum makes your skin glow and look radiant throughout the day by replenishing your skin’s moisture levels. It has a rich blend of organic ingredients including carrot, turnip, cabbage and broccoli! That’s more veggies than you ate today probably 😉

 Benton Honest Cleansing Foam

One of my favorite cleansers! The Honest Cleansing Foam is a rich creamy foam cleanser which has a very faint Dove like smell. It’s perfect for using after your oil cleanser and easily cuts trough leftover makeup residue. Instead of leaving your face dry and irritated, it’s botanical ingredients such as palm oil-based surfactants, camellia japonica seed oil, camellia sinesis leaf water and centella asiatica extract help to moisturize your skin while cleansing. This hypoallergenic cleanser minimizes skin irritation and a tight feeling after cleansing.

  Benton Fermentation Essence

The star on the ingredient list of this essence is definitely the Galactomyces ferment filtrate which makes up 80% of the whole bottle. Galactomyces is a type of fermented yeast that provides elasticity and brighten the skin. This high concentration of fermented yeast combined with several moisturizing ingredients such as Ceramide and Hyaluronic Acid promote cell turnover and makes room for supple healthy looking skin. The fragrance and color free formula make it suitable for all skintypes even sensitive skin.

 Cosrx Mela 14 White Ampule

Cosrx has 3 different types of serum and their Mela 14 White Ampule is the brightening serum of the group! It’s main ingredient is apple water which natural acids gently exfoliate the skin. The combination of the apple water and Niacinamide are a powerful combo. The formula is perfect for concerns as acne scars and hyper pigmentation. Use in your nighttime routine paired up with your favorite moisturizer and gently fade your scars overnight.

 Cosrx Ultimate Nourishing Rice Overnight Spa Mask

Let’s continue with your new nighttime favorite. The Cosrx Ultimate Nourishing Rice Overnight Spa Mask! The 68.9% of rice extract in this sleeping pack is combined with Niacinamide and together they help to brighten and moisturize your skin overnight. Because of it’s lightweight texture, it can be used as a moisturizer too!

Gerelateerde afbeelding

Cruelty free products in Korea

Since this bill was passed early this year Korea is now in a transitioning phase and by 2018 all cosmetics cannot be tested on animals anymore. There isn’t a brand yet which I know of which is 100% vegan. This is mainly because many popular skincare products contain ingredients like propolis, beeswax and snail secretion, however; there are many brands known for being cruelty free. Popular Korean cruelty free brands are Klairs, Benton and Cosrx.

Korean Cosmetics sold in China

There is still this confusion on Korean cosmetics being sold in China and the confusion continues since Chinese laws are becoming more difficult to understand everyday. In 2017 China finally decided to recognize data from a completely non-animal test method for evaluating a product’s potential to cause harm after exposure to light. If you like to read more about this you can refer to this post from PETA. Even though this might seem like a step in the right direction the Chemical Inspection and Regulation Service of China (CIRS) unfortunately changed it’s guidelines to include more types of products that must undergo compulsory animal testing. Previously, products sold via e-commerce were exempt from this rule, meaning products sold online did not required to be tested on animals. These new changes require any bonded shipment to go trough a registration process which requires animal testing. A bonded shipment means a product is held in a warehouse in China before it’s shipped to their customer. All cosmetics sold in stores continue to have compulsory animal testing.

Large Korean brands like Etude House and Innisfree often have a separate branch for China where they would produce almost identical items however abide with the Chinese laws on animal testing and other formulation restrictions. This means they have a whole separate branch where they produce cosmetics solely for the purpose of selling cosmetics to the Chinese market . This does mean that these brands are not 100% cruelty free. So you have to be careful with your online purchases and check thoroughly for the origin of your products. If you like to read more about animal testing in China you can read this interesting article here.

PETA & KARA

You might have heard already of the PETA which is an organization that focuses on the rights of animals. Korea actually has something similar which is called the KARA. KARA is short for Korean Animal Rights Advocates and they work in a similar way to the PETA. They have created a list which gives more information on cruelty free and vegan Korean beauty brands which you can view here.

The first block of brands are brands that don’t test on animals, have no animal derived ingredients and do not export to China. I feel this is where list is a bit outdated, so It’s up to you how much you value this. The second block are brands that don’t test on animals and don’t export to China. The third block stands for no animal testing and no animal derived ingredients. Final block is brands that just don’t test on animals.

Reading labels

The best thing you can do when beauty shopping is reading the labels. If you are shopping online no worries! Almost all websites nowadays offer detailed product descriptions with the ingredients included. If you need any additional help just check the Animal Derived Ingredients List the PETA has on their website or just simply message the brand or store. I’m sure they will be very helpful in your search for the right products!

 

We hope this helps your Korean Beauty adventure as an animal lover!

‘XOXO

Ichigo

4 thoughts on “The Best Vegan Korean Beauty Products

  1. Anonymous says:

    I’m vegan myself and I was checking this because I’m not sure if some Benton products are vegan (love the fermentation eye cream and wanted to see if the fermentation essence was vegan). I came across the Wishtrend website and since a lot of other brands are part of the group, they have a lot of info there. They actually label which products are vegan and which ones not. COSRX, Dear Klairs and others are part of the group, but not all their products are vegan friendly.

    • says:

      Hi Leire than you for commenting! We tried providing as many sources as possible to make this post as inclusive as we can. As the whole selling in China thing can be pretty confusing we listed the link to the KARA website where you can check for each brand if they are selling in China or not. Some people are fine with it while others are not, this is, of course, everyone’s own decision. Cosrx and Klairs are not entirely vegan as some of their products contain snail mucin, honey or beeswax but they have a lot of vegan options and are not sold in mainland China. We are happy that there are many Korean brands moving forward now to the vegan/ cruelty-free road (with cool brands like Happy Vegan popping up!) and hope this post was helpful for you.

    • says:

      Unfortunately, the list by Kara hasn’t updated that frequently and neither of these brands is on the list. We do not carry Make P:rem so I don’t have any contacts with them however, I could try and email our contact from Petitfee/Koelf and ask them about their vegan options and selling in China if you’d like 😀

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