"In the anti-aging beauty market, Korea is ahead of the United States."
U.S. dermatologist Mark Halsey said this at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference held in San Francisco on Jan. 14 (local time), noting that "Korea's procedure trends are rapidly influencing the U.S. medical field."
The remark came during an official panel discussion themed "Beyond K-Beauty." It is unusual for K-beauty to be treated as the subject of a single session at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, considered the world's largest pharmaceutical and biotech investment event.
Halsey said, "In the past, cosmetic procedures centered on middle-aged and older adults, but they are now spreading to younger age groups, and Korea is at the starting point of this trend." Observers say Korea is creating a new standard in aesthetic medicine by simultaneously boosting procedural efficiency and outcomes.
He explained, "Korean dermatology has a rich pool of professional injectors and high accessibility to equipment," adding that "combination procedures that pair energy-based devices (EBD) with injectables such as skin boosters have naturally gone mainstream."
Representatives from domestic medical aesthetic device corporations CLASSYS and skin booster manufacturer Vaim attended the panel.
Kim Rae-hee, head of marketing at CLASSYS, said of changes in the global market, "Demand is rapidly growing for procedures with less pain, faster recovery, and more natural results," adding, "As the pace of market change accelerates, technical completeness together with the agility to implement it immediately is determining corporations' competitiveness."