What Koreans Actually Buy at Olive Young (Real Rankings, Not a Sponsored List)

Every “best of Olive Young” list I read abroad has the same eight brands in it. I shop this store in Seoul, and that’s not what’s actually selling here. So I pulled the real thing — Olive Young’s own live rankings across eight categories, 553 products, on the day I’m writing this.

The biggest surprise isn’t which Korean brands won. It’s that two of the most-stocked brands in the whole store are French, and one of the top five skincare products is Canadian. Which tells you something about what K-beauty actually means.

In this article:

• The actual skincare top 10
• Three things the rankings say that nobody abroad mentions
• The sunscreen aisle, which is its own story
• Why 1+1 changes what “bestseller” means
• What this list won’t tell you
• What I’d actually pick, by skin type

The actual skincare top 10 right now

Straight from the shelf ranking, in order.

1. BIODANCE Pore Perfecting Collagen Peptide Serum (바이오던스)
2. S.NATURE Aqua Oasis Hydrating Gel Cream (에스네이처)
3. IOPE XMD Stem3 Clinical Recovery Serum (아이오페)
4. TORRIDEN Dive In Low Molecular Hyaluronic Acid Serum (토리든)
5. The Ordinary Glycolic Acid 7% Exfoliating Toner (디오디너리)
6. Anua TXA Niacin Blemish Serum (아누아)
7. Anua PDRN Hyaluronic Acid Capsule 100 Serum (아누아)
8. IOPE Retinol Super Bounce Serum (아이오페)
9. celimax The Vita A Retinal Shot Tightening Booster (셀리맥스)
10. Celladix Sebum Rebalancing RX 131 Ampoule (셀라딕스)

If you’ve read a K-beauty roundup this year, you probably recognise two names on that list. Maybe three.

Three things this ranking says that nobody abroad mentions

1. K-beauty is not a passport check on the bottle

Number five in the Korean skincare ranking is The Ordinary — Canadian. And it isn’t the only outsider sitting near the top:

• La Roche-Posay Effaclar Deep Cleansing Foaming Cream — #4 in cleansing (France)
• The Ordinary Glycolic Acid 7% Exfoliating Toner — #5 in skincare (Canada)
• Bioderma Sensibio H2O — #7 in cleansing (France)

Three top-ten placements across skincare and cleansing, and not one of them Korean. Price is doing a lot of the work here — The Ordinary’s niacinamide serum sits at ₩15,700, which undercuts 80 of the 86 ranked skincare products.

This is the thing that gets lost in translation. K-beauty is not “products made in Korea” — it’s what Koreans actually use. And what we actually use includes a lot of French pharmacy skincare, because it works and because Olive Young stocks it at a price that makes sense.

Korean shoppers are ruthlessly practical here. Nobody’s checking the country of origin — they’re checking the ingredient list, the price, and whether it’s on 1+1 this week. The Korean part of K-beauty is the shopping culture: the layering, the ingredient literacy, the willingness to swap brands the moment something better lands. Not the flag on the box.

So if you’re building a “K-beauty routine” and you already own Sensibio or Anthelios — you’re not cheating. You’re doing exactly what we do.

2. The brands Korea actually trusts are ones you’ve never heard of

Count how often each brand appears across all eight categories and the leaderboard looks nothing like an export list:

• AESTURA (에스트라) — 15 appearances
• Zeroid (제로이드) — 13
• Illiyoon (일리윤) — 9
• Bring Green (브링그린) — 7
• Beplain (비플레인) — 7
• Cell Fusion C (셀퓨전씨) — 7

These are Korea’s derma-counter brands — the ones dermatologists hand out and everyone’s mum buys. Almost none of them run English marketing, so they’re invisible in Western roundups. Meanwhile Beauty of Joseon, which dominates every English-language list, appears eight times here. Popular, genuinely — but not the giant it looks like from outside.

Zeroid is the one I’d flag hardest. Thirteen appearances, a number-five spot in cleansing, and if you search for it in English you’ll find almost nothing. I come back to it at the end.

3. PDRN isn’t a TikTok invention

PDRN (연어 DNA, salmon DNA) has been all over short-form video this year, and the easy assumption is that it’s marketing froth. The rankings say otherwise: Anua’s PDRN serum sits at number seven in skincare, and a PDRN sunscreen is number three in sun care. It’s selling on home turf, to people who aren’t watching the English-language hype cycle at all.

That doesn’t make it magic. It means the trend has a real product behind it, which is more than you can say for a lot of ingredient trends.

The sunscreen aisle is its own story

Sun care is the one category where I’d argue Korea genuinely leads, and the ranking is almost comically lopsided:

1. Beauty of Joseon Relief Sun — with a mini size included
2. Beauty of Joseon Aqua Fresh — same free mini
3. VT PDRN Air Cloud Sunscreen
4. Beauty of Joseon Day Screen Tinted — puff and mini included
5. Mediheal Madecassoside Moisture Sun Serum — sold as a double
6. Goodal Houttuynia Cordata Calming Sun — buy one get one

Three of the top four are the same brand. This is the part that’s hard to explain to anyone who buys sunscreen at a US drugstore: the filters here are better, the textures are better, and it costs less than the thing you’re currently not wearing because it feels awful.

Why “1+1” changes what bestseller means

Look at those sunscreen entries again. +20ml 증정. 1+1. Free minis, buy-one-get-ones, bundled puffs.

Korean beauty retail runs on 증정 (jeungjeong — the free gift), and it moves the rankings hard. A product on a good 1+1 week can outsell a better product that isn’t. So when you read a Korean bestseller list, you’re reading two things at once: what people like, and what happened to be on a deal that week.

I’d honestly rather have it that way — you get to try things cheaply. But it means a number-one spot isn’t the same signal it would be on Amazon. Check whether the winner is winning on merit or on a gift-with-purchase.

What this list won’t tell you

It counts sales, not shoppers. Foreign visitors were 2% of Olive Young’s offline sales in 2022. By 2025 they were over 25%. For most of this list that barely moves anything. For the export-heavy names it moves a lot — Beauty of Joseon reached Olive Young’s global mall first and the Myeongdong flagship second, and Myeongdong is the most tourist-heavy store in the country. So read this as what sells in Olive Young, which is not quite the same thing as what is sitting on a Korean bathroom shelf. I get into that properly in the sunscreen guide.

A ranking is a snapshot, not a verdict. Three limits worth saying out loud:

• It’s one day. These positions shift weekly, and hard during sale periods. Olive Young’s next big sale runs from late August, and half of this will reshuffle.
• Popular isn’t right-for-you. Four of the skincare top ten are retinol or acid products. If your barrier is already unhappy, the correct move is none of them.
• Availability is uneven. Some of these ship internationally without fuss. Others — the derma-counter brands especially — barely exist outside Korea.

One more, because it matters: don’t stack the retinol and the glycolic toner just because both made the list. Alternate nights, and give your skin a week between introductions.

What I’d actually pick from this list

Rankings are useful, but they don’t know your skin. Here’s how I’d narrow it down.

If your skin is dry

Round Lab Birch Juice Moisturizing line (라운드랩 자작나무). This is the safe, no-drama pick — the moisturizer people here reach for when they want hydration without a whole new routine. Nothing in it is going to fight with the rest of your shelf, and that’s the point.

Round Lab shows up eight times across the store, but it’s the sun care where it really holds: the Birch Juice Moisturizing Sun Cream is number eight in sun care. If you want the whole texture in one product, start there. The 1025 Dokdo Toner is the other one you’ll see in half the bathrooms in Korea.

If your skin is sensitive

Zeroid (제로이드). This is the one I’d push hardest, and it’s the one you’ve almost certainly never heard of — thirteen appearances across the store, and virtually no English-language presence.

It’s a Korean derma brand built around barrier repair, and it’s what gets recommended here when skin is reacting to everything. The Soothing Cream sits at number sixteen in skincare, and the Foaming Cleanser is number five in the entire cleansing category. Those are real positions, not a launch push.

If you’ve been cycling through “gentle” products that still sting, this is the direction I’d go before adding anything active.

If you only want one thing

The Beauty of Joseon Relief Sun at number one in sun care. Sunscreen is the step that does the most work long-term, and this one is genuinely good at a price that makes daily use easy.

If you’re curious about the hype

The Anua PDRN serum at number seven. Just don’t expect it to do anything a good hydrating serum wouldn’t, and don’t start it in the same week as a retinol.

How to buy any of it from outside Korea

The realistic routes, in the order I’d try them:

• Sephora US — brand new. On 20 August, Olive Young opened a “K-Beauty Edit” counter in around 580 Sephora stores across the US and on Sephora’s site: roughly 150 products from 19 Korean brands. Two of them are sitting near the top of the ranking above — S.NATURE at number two, TORRIDEN at number four — alongside Beplain, Abib, Manyo, Banila Co, Cell Fusion C and Rejuran. It isn’t the full Korean catalogue, but it’s the first time you can pick these up in person in the States.
• Olive Young Global — the widest selection, and it’s the same catalogue I’m looking at. Shipping isn’t instant.
• Amazon — fastest, narrower range, and prices run well above Korean retail. Fine for the big export brands.
• YesStyle — good for the mid-tier names, though check seller details; counterfeits are a real issue in K-beauty right now and worth reading up on before you order.

Whatever you use, expect to pay a meaningful premium over the Korean shelf price. Some of that is shipping and duties. Some of it is just distance. If you’re going to pay it, pay it for the things that are genuinely hard to replace — the sunscreens, mostly.

I’ll re-pull these rankings after the August sale and see what actually moved. My guess is the sunscreens hold and the retinols shuffle.