What we are reading, and what we are prepared to argue.

The ten-step routine was being argued about in Korea years before Europe finished adopting it. This is the clearest account of that backlash — the ‘333 rule’, and the case for fitting a routine to a person rather than to a trend.

It is the closest thing to our own argument that we did not write, which is a good reason to read it somewhere other than here.

The most useful page on the internet for anyone whose skin has started stinging. Wong is a chemist, she describes over-exfoliation as a mild chemical burn, and her first instruction is to stop using things — which is not advice you often get from people who write about skincare for a living.

Recovery is measured in weeks and months rather than days. That part matters more than the product list.

Most disappointment with a sunscreen is an application problem rather than a product problem: roughly a teaspoon for the face, and again after two hours. Nobody needs a better bottle as often as they think they do.

From the dermatologists’ own professional body, so there is nothing being sold at the end of it.

In 2020 a well-liked Korean sunscreen claiming SPF 50+ was independently tested at SPF 19, by two European laboratories, using the standard in-vivo method. This is the primary account, with the numbers in it.

We would rather you read this than take our word for it that we ask suppliers for SPF and UVA test reports before a sunscreen goes on sale.

The necessary companion to the piece above, and the reason we do not draw a national conclusion from a single failure. SPF cannot be predicted from an ingredient list; one product returned results between 37 and 75 across five laboratories; an American test found 23 of 60 sunscreens delivering under half their claim.

The problem is that SPF testing is noisy, not that a country cannot be trusted.

The German and French consumer testing bodies bought sunscreens from the large marketplaces and put them through a laboratory. Three contained a UV filter banned in the EU. Four measured SPF 2.1 or lower.

This is the line between a Korean sunscreen and a marketplace listing that says Korean, and it is the plainest argument we know for asking who the EU Responsible Person is before buying anything at all.

Consumer Reports laboratory-tested paired Korean and American versions of the same brand’s formula. The Korean one measured SPF 48, with top marks for both UVA and UVB. The American one measured 16.

It is the clearest evidence we have seen that what differs between those two markets is the list of permitted filters, not the competence of the people making the product.

Counterfeiters now replicate the barcode. That single detail is why ‘the pack looked right’ is not an authenticity check — not for you, and not for us either.

It is the concrete reason we ask a supplier for a CPNP reference and a named Responsible Person, rather than inspecting a box and forming an impression.

Most Korean beauty brands do not make their own products. Two contract manufacturers make a very large share of them, which is why a texture you like can appear under three different labels, and why one manufacturing problem can travel across several brands at once.

Useful for anyone who suspects brand loyalty is doing more work in this category than it can really bear.

A fair criticism of the category we sell, with the evidence attached: shade ranges have not globalised at the speed the category has.

It is about base makeup rather than skincare, so it does not indict our own shelves directly — which is exactly why we should say plainly that linking to it costs us nothing.