Arellano, Andi

2015-08421
Geog 173 Ethnography #2

My Map is Gangnam Beauty: The Rise of K-Beauty by Julieber Bersabe, Christopher

Deita, Jerome Guinto, and Jhoana Mondez

The storymaps exhibit held at the AS lobby last March 19-22 featured the different maps
that were made by Geography 1 students. A storymap is essentially a map that tells a story.
Some of the maps featured a list of comfort rooms in the University of the Philippines (UP) campus,
one map measured the slipperiness of floors of the main lobbies of UP buildings, and another
map showed the different colleges and the average number of hours of sleep students get per
night. The storymap pictured above is a map about South Korean cosmetic products and where
it is exported around the world and the volume for each region.

Nowadays, everyone is all about skincare, specifically Korean skincare. Almost everyone
I know has their own skincare regimen or ritual, and they would use a multitude of Korean products
and having an average of 10 steps that are engrained in their daily lives. I, myself, got into the
whole trend back in 2017 and I am still doing my 10-step regimen up to this day. Aside from the
skincare industry, South Korea’s cosmetics industry also experienced a boom and both industries
fall under what we call ‘K-Beauty.’

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 According to the creators of the map, the exports of Korean cosmetics reached 4.8 billion
back in October 2018. This could be attributed to the Hallyu phenomenon – the notable rise in
popularity of South Korean culture. This phenomenon was first driven by Korean dramas and K-
pop, which were further popularized through social media. Now, everyone is aiming for the fresh,
airbrushed, K-drama-inspired look – with every girl off to the malls to buy the new cosmetic
product used by a South Korean star or featured in a recent episode of a K-drama. I personally
like the trend as Korean makeup tends to be on the natural side, which I am a huge fan of.

According to BBC News, South Korean women, on average, spend twice as much on
beauty products and cosmetics than American women. This reminded me of our topic in class
about culture and its components. Specifically, it reminded me of the cross-cultural analysis on
the construction of beauty and how beauty is portrayed in advertising. In the paper by Frith, Shaw,
and Cheng, they noticed a difference between the representation of women in the United States
(US) and in Asia. Furthermore, Asian advertising were heavily dominated by cosmetics and
beauty products while the U.S. ads contained a lot of clothing. From our discussion, we know that
each culture has their own set of assumptions and values. The difference in their view of what
constitutes beauty is attributed to the differences in the two regions’ general beliefs. For
Americans, the findings of the study suggest that Americans value the body more, while Asian
beauty is more correlated to their faces. Another possible reason behind the Asian view is that
we are more conservative in terms of clothing, mostly because of religion. These values can take
account for why exports of K-Beauty is heavily concentrated in the neighboring regions of South
Korea, such as China and Japan, with China being the top importer of Korean cosmetics.

Furthermore, as I was researching on the history of makeup in Korea, I found that makeup
was used for protection against the outside environment. In addition to that, Koreans believed
that taking care of your physical appearance could affect your internal and spiritual health. These
are additional assumptions that could explain why skincare and makeup is such a huge part of
Korean culture. Although K-Beauty is very popular among the Asian countries, we are also
starting to see a rise in exports to US and Europe. With globalization and the rise of social media,
a lot more Americans and Europeans have been joining the trend and large retailers have been
rolling out ‘K-Beauty’ sections in their stores and even independent boutiques have been trying
to bring famous brands such as Laneige and Innisfree to America. It is amusing to see how Korean
culture flowed from the East all the way to the West. I could relate this to our topic of cultural flows.
The emergence of the K-Beauty culture in the west could be attributed to three types of cultural

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flows: ethnoscapes, technoscapes, and mediascapes. The flow of people could be a reason why
because Korean immigrants could have helped in popularizing their culture – approximately 2.4
percent of the 40 million immigrants are Koreans. The diffusion of goods is self-explanatory. Lastly,
the diffusion of images through magazines, TV, and film could be the primary reason as to why
the K-Beauty trend has risen. An example would be K-pop groups such as Twice and BTS would
have millions of views on Youtube, With the rise of K-pop and K-drama and their huge fan base,
it is not that uncommon to see at least one image related to it on our social media feeds.

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