Ad copy

I spent almost three years thinking I needed better makeup. Every few months I convinced myself the problem was my foundation, concealer, or powder because my face suddenly started looking older and more tired in photos. At first it only happened in certain lighting. I would leave the house feeling fine, then catch my reflection later in the day and feel embarrassed because my makeup suddenly looked dry and heavy. The skin around my mouth looked darker by the afternoon. My jawline looked softer than I remembered. No matter how much makeup I used, my face still looked exhausted underneath it. I blamed stress for a long time because I did not want to admit my face was changing. Then one afternoon my friend took a candid picture of me during lunch and sent it into our group chat later that evening. Everybody else looked normal. I kept zooming into my own face trying to understand why I suddenly looked so tired in daylight. My makeup looked like it was sitting on top of my skin instead of blending into it. The lower half of my face looked heavier than I realized. That photo stayed in my head for weeks afterward. After that I started noticing the same thing everywhere. Bright restaurant windows. Random selfies before meetings. Group photos other people posted online without warning. The craziest part is how much money I had already spent trying to stop it. I bought expensive skincare products for years because every new cream promised firmer skin, tighter contours, or a more defined jawline. Some products made my skin look smoother for a few hours. Some helped my makeup look better until lunchtime. Nothing changed the tired look underneath my makeup. By evening my face still looked worn out. I even started avoiding front-facing cameras because I hated seeing myself in direct lighting. Daylight became the worst because it showed every change around my mouth and jawline. Then I had dinner with my friend Mina who grew up in Seoul. She is in her fifties now and her skin still looks rested in daylight without thick makeup covering it. Her face still looks firm and healthy in a way I almost never see anymore. At some point I finally asked what skincare she uses because I felt exhausted from wasting money on products which never seemed to help for long. She told me something no skincare brand had ever explained properly before. According to her, many anti-aging products mostly stay near the surface of the skin instead of absorbing deeply enough to help where dullness and sagging start. Women keep layering richer creams and heavier makeup while their skin underneath keeps looking more tired. Then she showed me Koriderm. Simple white tube. Red lettering. No luxury packaging. She explained Korean skincare focuses heavily on helping ingredients absorb properly because firmer-looking skin starts underneath the surface, not on top of it. The formula uses Centella Asiatica together with a protein complex designed to help ingredients absorb faster than standard creams instead of leaving a layer sitting on the face for hours. What convinced me was not even the explanation. It was Mina herself. Her skin looked calm and healthy in direct lighting without heavy makeup covering everything. So I started using Koriderm every night without expecting much because by that point I had already disappointed myself with so many products. The first thing I noticed was how different it felt from every cream I had used before. It absorbed fast and my skin did not feel coated afterward. A few weeks later my makeup still looked smooth by the end of the day instead of melting into lines around my mouth. The heaviness around my jaw looked softer too. Then one afternoon I opened the front camera sitting in my parked car before going into a grocery store. Same harsh daylight as before. But this time my face looked rested instead of exhausted. My skin looked brighter and my makeup looked smoother because it was no longer sitting on top of dull-looking skin. A few days later one of my coworkers asked if I changed my makeup because my skin suddenly looked “more awake” during meetings. I had not changed my makeup at all. That was the strange part. Later Mina told me Koriderm has already sold more than two million tubes in Korea. After using it myself, I understood why women keep rebuying it. Most women here still have not heard about it yet. Meanwhile I spent years trying to fix tired-looking skin with makeup instead of understanding why my skin underneath looked exhausted in the first place.