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Seoul
Dear Ones,
When my dear friend Marie-Bettina confessed that she owes her stunning complexion to her plastic surgeon and Korean skin
care products, I decided to check out Seoul. Just call us Seoul Sisters.
Seoul is not much of a tourist destination, but it fills with those on a business mission and offers what they call Health
Tourism. There's day spas in every department store and street market in Seoul; beauty products are sold even from street
stalls. For high end brands you head to the famed Lotte Department store (3 buildings, 10 floors each) or a deluxe hotel.
You can also stock up in Manhattan where the latest beauty trend is Korean, from the low-end Missha stores (just opened on
lower Fifth Avenue) to the ultra fancy Amore Pacific with its Beauty Gallery in SoHo and merchandise on the shelves at the
exclusive Bergdorf-Goodman.
In Seoul, the place to start the Seoul searching is the Shilla Hotel-the only member of Leading Hotels of the World in
Seoul-which has its own free standing Duty Free store that is a small version of Galeries Lafayette, filled with an international
bevy of makeup and skin care brands (Australian Jurlique; French Sisley; American Estee Lauder). There is an entire salon
of Korean products including ginseng, chocolate covered pepper paste bonbons and a dozen different skin care lines. Duty free
stores such as this are popular for tourists who receive a 10% discount from regular store prices.
LOCAL BRANDS: Many of the Korean products have unpronounceable names that make you feel dumb, such as the luxe brand Sulwhasoo,
brought to you by the Amore Pacific family. Another good line is The History of Qi, whose younger sister line is O-hui. The
Qi packaging is glam and exotic but the name of the product is hard to read and pronounce; in fact, if you can't read Korean,
the label appears to say History of Fo!
Sometimes the prices are also exotic, making you wonder how a country such as Korea can have the highest per capita rate
of skin care and beauty product usage in the world. Well-heeled new money Korean women spend $400 for a jar of Time Renewal
cream from Amore Pacific, the line's most famous product. Starter kits or travel paks are sold, but you will pay $140 and
up (way up) for a miniature team of five or six products. These brands are expensive because of the ingredients which are
often based on a combination of ancient Oriental medicines and new age technology. Many high end brands have ginseng in them;
Charmzone, one of the less expensive brands, offers Albatross Cream to soften and protect the skin.
The inexpensive lines have a lot of charm - Face Shop is similar to The Body Shop but with a wide range of lines and inexpensive
products. Nothing costs more than $12; many products - skin care and color cosmetics - cost $2.50, such as a package of goop
made to look like it's in a yoghurt container. There's also lines called Wrinkle Stop, or ones made with soybean and pommegranite;
another is called Red Dirt. There are many lines of skin care for men, especially in the less expensive brands created for
teens and even pre-ados.
SPA TREATMENTS are popular in all forms, malls and department stores have spa services. A big treat on date night is to
sign up for Jjimujilbang, where you are provided with shorts and a T-shirt and spend the night on a warm jade floor. More
to Western taste are the hotel spas such as Shilla's new Guerlain Institut de Beaute, where your treatment begins with a traditional
Korean footbath. The masseuse sits in a sunken teak cabine while you lounge on a divan, overlooking the hills behind the hotel.
If you prefer something more Korean, you head to the Park Hyatt Seoul, the coolest hotel in town, created in the CEOX business
district across the Han River from the Shilla. The Park Club has a spa menu of over three dozen different treatments. This
time the foot massage is performed in a hand thrown bowl of local pottery; herbs are nestled into netting which is twisted
by sticks to wring out every ounce of therapy. Then comes the Korean massage, performed with hands, palms, elbows and tender
blows meant to bruise while increasing circulation. I did not bruise and floated away, rejuvenated.
Amore Pacific kisses,
SuzyKG
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