SEOUL: Korea's honorary tourism ambassadors took centre stage at the start of the Korea Beauty Festival on Thursday (June 25), sharing what keeps drawing them back to the country: beauty and wellness experiences they say are difficult to find anywhere else.
The event, featuring a welcome dinner and billed as KBF Night, brought about 200 guests to The Shilla Seoul, including 120 travel industry buyers and sellers, 40 influencers and members of the local media. The evening's highlight was a talk show-style programme in which ambassadors from Mexico, Japan and Mongolia discussed Korean skincare, wellness and the appeal of returning to Korea.
Mexican actor and singer Ceci de la Cueva, in Korea for the first time, said the country offers treatments she can't find anywhere else.
"Nowhere else in the world can you get the treatments you have here in Korea, and that's a fact. You have the best medical hands with the latest technologies to decide what can boost your looks," she said.
Her enthusiasm extends to her home, which she said is already full of Korean cosmetics.
Calling Korea a second home, de la Cueva said this would be the first of many visits. "This is just my first time of many. I'm going to be 10 years younger every single time I come," she said.
Japanese actor Kyoko Hasegawa pointed to the fast pace of beauty trends in Korea. She said she often tries new products with her daughter and had high praise for what she sees in Korean skin care.
"Korean people all have clean, beautiful skin, glossy hair and smooth skin," she said.
The core of her own routine, she said, is thorough moisturising. She removes her makeup completely before layering on lotion, along with plenty of water and tea brewed at home, while also giving attention to scalp care, exercise and good sleep.
"Rather than trying to earn other people's praise, treasuring and loving yourself is what beauty and health are really about," she said.
For Mongolian content creator Chadraabal Ganinj, the draw of Korea is as much about medical tourism as cosmetics. She came to Seoul two years ago for treatment after a cancer diagnosis at 33, and credits Korean care with saving her life.
"When you hit rock bottom, there's only one place to go from there, and that's up. The choice I made was simply not to die, to be strong for my kids and to believe in the medical care South Korea could make happen," she said.
Treated at Seoul National University Hospital, Chadraabal had learned two days earlier that she is two years cancer-free. She now runs a personal colour and fashion consulting studio benchmarked by the K-beauty industry.
The Korea Beauty Festival guests toured dermatology and wellness sites, and their itinerary includes four days touring Busan, Jeju and Gangwon Province. The event is part of Korea's push to lift foreign arrivals from fewer than 20 million last year to 30 million by 2028.
Now in its third year, the Korea Beauty Festival opened on Wednesday under the theme "All about Beauty: Curated by KBF." A business consultation on Thursday drew 39 travel companies from 16 countries and 48 domestic beauty and medical firms, while a special exhibition of more than 800 beauty tourism products runs across nine global travel platforms through Sept. 30.
Foreign tourists spent 843.3 billion won (US$546 million) on beauty services in Korea last year, up 38 per cent from a year earlier, according to the Korea Tourism Data Lab. - The Korea Herald/ANN
