How to read a Korean ingredient list

The front of a Korean skincare box is marketing. The ingredient list on the back is a regulated document, written in a naming system that is identical in Seoul and in New York, and it is the only part of the packaging that has to agree with what is actually in the bottle. Learning to read it takes about ten minutes and it settles most of the questions people ask us.

We hold complete manufacturer ingredient lists for 4,435 of the products we sell, so every example below is quoted from a list you can pull up yourself and check against the box we ship you.

What is an INCI list?

INCI stands for International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients. It is a fixed vocabulary: one ingredient, one name, the same name in every market that uses the system, which includes both Korea and the United States. Water is always Water or Aqua. Vitamin B3 is always Niacinamide. Centella is always Centella Asiatica Extract, whatever the front of the box calls it.

That fixed vocabulary is what makes the list useful. A brand can call a product calming, gentle, intensive or clinical without any of those words meaning anything in particular. It cannot put Niacinamide on the INCI list unless niacinamide is in the bottle, and it cannot leave it off if it is.

What does the order of the ingredients tell me?

Ingredients are listed in descending order of concentration, and that rule holds only down to one percent. Below one percent a manufacturer may list in any order it likes. So the list splits into two halves that you read completely differently:

• Above the one percent line, position is quantitative. Fifth is genuinely more than eighth. This is where the vehicle lives: the water, the glycerin, the butylene glycol, the oils and the thickeners that decide how the product feels.
• Below the one percent line, position is meaningless. An active sitting twenty-second is not necessarily present in a smaller amount than one sitting eighteenth. People over-read this half constantly, in both directions.

How do I find the one percent line?

There is no marker, so you find it by landmark. Several ingredient classes are almost never used above one percent, and the first one you meet going down the list puts you at or below the boundary:

• Preservatives. Phenoxyethanol (capped at one percent in Korea and the EU), ethylhexylglycerin, chlorphenesin, sodium benzoate.
• Chelators. Disodium EDTA and tetrasodium EDTA, typically 0.05 to 0.2 percent.
• Gums and gelling agents. Xanthan gum, carbomer, sclerotium gum, ammonium acryloyldimethyltaurate copolymer. These thicken at fractions of a percent.
• pH adjusters. Triethanolamine, sodium hydroxide, citric acid.
• Fragrance and antioxidant tails. Parfum, limonene, linalool, tocopherol.

Find the first of those, draw your line, and reread the list. Most of the disappointment people feel about a product they researched carefully comes from an ingredient they were excited about sitting well below that line.

Why do Korean ingredient lists print numbers in brackets?

Because Korean manufacturers routinely declare the exact concentration of the ingredients they want credit for, in parentheses, directly inside the INCI list. It is a house convention rather than a legal requirement, and it is the single most useful thing about reading a Korean list. In our catalogue 272 products declare at least one figure in parts per million and 241 declare a percentage outright.

The units are worth committing to memory, because brands move between them and the change of unit hides the change of scale:

• 10,000 ppm equals 1 percent.
• 1,000 ppm equals 0.1 percent.
• 1 ppm equals 0.0001 percent.
• 1 ppb equals 0.0000001 percent, a thousand times smaller again.

A list that quotes one ingredient in percent and the next in parts per billion is not being inconsistent by accident.

What does the word cica on the front of a box actually buy you?

Anything from a tenth of the formula to a rounding error, and the brands themselves print which. Across our range, 38 products declare a centella figure. The declared amounts run from 100,880 ppm down to 1 ppm. That is a hundred-thousand-fold spread behind one marketing word.

Two real lists, both quoted in full from the manufacturer, make the point better than any argument:

mixsoon H.C.T. Essence opens: Water, Glycerin, Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree) Leaf Extract (101,920ppm), Houttuynia Cordata Extract (101,920ppm), Centella Asiatica Extract (100,880ppm), Propanediol. Three botanicals at roughly ten percent each, declared, in the top five. The initials in the product name are the three plants, and the numbers back them.

TONYMOLY Houttuynia Cordata Cica Quick Calming Toner opens: Houttuynia Cordata Extract (97 %), Glycerin, Hydroxyacetophenone, 1,2-Hexanediol, Allantoin, Ethylhexylglycerin, Water, Dipotassium Glycyrrhizate, Sodium Hyaluronate, Lactobacillus Ferment (9 Ppm), Centella Asiatica Extract (1 Ppm), Centella Asiatica Leaf Extract (1 Ppm), Centella Asiatica Root Extract (1 Ppm), Asiatic Acid (10 Ppb), Asiaticoside (10 Ppb), Madecassic Acid (1 Ppb), Madecassoside (1 Ppb), Disodium EDTA.

Read that second list properly and it tells you two separate things. It is a serious houttuynia product: houttuynia extract is 97 percent of it, which is why water appears seventh rather than first. The liquid of the formula is the plant extract. And the word cica in the product name is carried by centella at one part per million with its four triterpenes at parts per billion, which is a flavour of centella rather than a dose of it.

Neither list is dishonest. The manufacturer printed both numbers. The difference is that one product is built on centella and the other is built on houttuynia and mentions centella, and only the ingredient list distinguishes them. The four words people use interchangeably here are pulled apart in centella, cica, madecassoside and TECA.

What is the difference between an extract, a ferment and an isolated active?

Three different things wearing similar names, and the distinction changes what you should expect.

• An extract (Centella Asiatica Extract, Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract) is plant matter pulled into a solvent, usually water, glycerin or butylene glycol. Its strength depends entirely on the ratio the supplier used, which the INCI name does not carry. This is why the bracketed ppm figure matters so much on Korean lists: it is the only place that ratio surfaces.
• A ferment (Lactobacillus Ferment, Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate, Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate) is a substrate that has been metabolised by a culture and then filtered. The output is a mixture of amino acids, organic acids and peptides rather than one molecule.
• An isolated active (Niacinamide, Madecassoside, Adenosine, Tranexamic Acid, 3-O-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid) is a single purified compound at a knowable concentration. When a brand wants a claim it can defend, this is the form it uses, which is why Anua's Niacinamide 10% + TXA 4% serum puts both figures in the product name and both compounds high in the list.

How do I check a list for fragrance and alcohol?

For fragrance, look for Fragrance or Parfum, and then look past it. The European allergen set is declared by its own INCI names, so Limonene, Linalool, Citronellol, Geraniol, Citral, Eugenol, Coumarin and Benzyl Salicylate at the tail of a list are fragrance components even when the word fragrance never appears. A list carrying four of those is a scented product. Of the 4,435 lists we hold, 1,250 declare fragrance or parfum.

For alcohol, the name matters enormously and this is the trap people fall into most often. Alcohol Denat. and SD Alcohol are volatile solvent alcohols: they thin a formula, speed its dry-down and can be drying at high placement in the list. Cetyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Alcohol, Stearyl Alcohol and Behenyl Alcohol are fatty alcohols, which are waxy solids used as emollients and emulsion stabilisers. They are the opposite kind of ingredient and they are in a great many products people describe as alcohol-free. Only 156 of our 4,435 lists carry Alcohol Denat. at all.

How do I tell what a product is for from its list alone?

Sort the top eight ingredients into three jobs and the product declares its own category.

• Humectants pull water into the stratum corneum: Glycerin, Butylene Glycol, Propanediol, Sodium Hyaluronate, Panthenol, Betaine, Hydroxyethyl Urea. A list that is humectants all the way down is a toner, an essence or a serum, and it needs something over it.
• Emollients fill between corneocytes and deliver slip: Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Squalane, Jojoba Esters, Dimethicone, Caprylyl Methicone, Coco-Caprylate.
• Occlusives slow water leaving the skin: Petrolatum, Shea Butter, Beeswax, Hydrogenated Polyisobutene, and the heavier silicones.

That sorting is also how you build an order of application. Thinnest and most humectant first, while the skin is still damp, then emollient, then occlusive to hold the lot in place. The full sequence and how to add an active into it without a reaction is set out in building a Korean routine your barrier can tolerate.

Two placement rules are worth knowing while you read. Direct acids and retinoids belong in the evening, because their use alongside daylight exposure is the common cause of the irritation people blame on the product. Antioxidants such as ascorbic acid and its derivatives sit in the morning, under sun care, where they have something to do.

Why do two products with nearly identical lists feel and behave differently?

Because an INCI list is a roster, not a recipe. Four things decide the outcome that the list does not carry, and knowing what they are is what separates reading a list from over-reading one.

• pH. Ascorbic acid needs a low pH to stay in the acid form that penetrates. Niacinamide is comfortable near neutral. Two serums naming the same compound at the same position can perform very differently on this alone.
• Particle size and dispersion. For anything suspended rather than dissolved, how finely it is milled and how well it is held apart decides the result on skin.
• The vehicle. Whether an active is carried in water, in a glycol, in a liposome or in an oil phase changes how much of it reaches the layer it acts on.
• Concentration above one percent. Unless the brand declares a figure, the list tells you order and not amount. This is exactly why the Korean bracket convention is worth seeking out.

Why does this matter more for Korean-market units?

Because the list on the box is the thing you can hold against the listing that sold it to you. We key every product in our catalogue to its barcode rather than to its name, we publish the manufacturer list for every product where we hold one, and both are printed on the unit that arrives. That means our claims are checkable against the box, in your hands, without taking our word for anything.

The production code on the same box tells you when the unit was made, and it is read in how to read the batch code on your Korean skincare. What we source and why is set out in our guide to original Korean formulas, and what genuinely changes between a Korean and an American release is in Korean formulas and US formulas.

Where do I start?

Pick a product you already own and read its list once with the one percent line drawn in. Then read one you are considering. Browse the toners, serums and ampoules or the whole range, and open the ingredients panel on any product page: the list we publish is the manufacturer list, quoted rather than summarised.