I’m Jongha Kim, Head of the Active Beauty Unit, which oversees IOPE, AP BEAUTY, Mamonde, primera, and HANYUL. I started with two brands—AP BEAUTY and primera—then took on IOPE three years ago, and added HANYUL and Mamonde last year, bringing the total to five brands. Currently, I’m working to position IOPE as a ‘Holistic Longevity Solution’ that helps customers reclaim their natural beauty and confidence in daily life as they age.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of IOPE, Korea’s No.1 anti-aging¹⁾ brand. Over the past 30 years, we’ve led the anti-aging category by staying at the forefront—introducing innovative anti-aging products like the Super Vital line, creating our proprietary Retinol RX^™  to optimize efficacy while reducing irritation, and pioneering bio-science to help improve skin rejuvenation. 

More recently, recognizing that it’s not easy for people in today’s busy world to invest the time and money required for visits to a dermatologist, we established a new vision to define IOPE’s unique role.

What IOPE aims to achieve is very clear: to satisfy both active treatment users who regularly get professional treatments and active skincare users who want to achieve optimal results through cosmetics alone. To do this, we aim to provide products that create synergy and maximize results for those who visit dermatologist clinics, while developing products that deliver similar level of efficacy to professional treatments through at-home skincare. While the cosmeceutical concept existed before, IOPE put it upfront as the brand identity. Our goal is for this new IOPE to be loved not only in Korea but also globally.

Actually, rather than lumping it together as K-beauty, we plan to approach customers with IOPE’s own distinct brand identity. This is just my personal opinion, but I think only Asian countries use initials to brand products globally. You don’t see F-beauty or US-beauty, after all. Within the K-beauty movement, we’re preparing to establish Clinical Grade—IOPE’s unique technology and characteristics—as our signature. We need to reach customers through the real functionality of IOPE products and our heritage of technological expertise.

First, we plan to actively communicate ‘professional treatment-level efficacy’ in North America, led by two products whose efficacy has been validated through clinical studies versus profesisonal treatments. —XMD Stem III Clinical Recovery Serum and Retinol RX^™ Reti-Jection^™  Serum. The fact that international customers who are enthusiastic about Korea’s dermatological treatment culture can experience these benefits at home without traveling to Korea is generating an explosive response.

If you ask about strategy, I’d say it’s the IOPE products themselves—with their outstanding functionality and clinically proven results. We’re fully prepared now. We’ll be opening our first store in March.

I’ve spent a long time working at various global cosmetics companies and have had many different experiences. The most significant advantage I’ve felt working at Amorepacific has been its flexibility. I’ve often seen brands get trapped within their own frameworks and struggle because of it. Even beyond cosmetics brands, many brands we loved as children have disappeared. In contrast, Amorepacific, with its 80-year history, remains strong. I believe the reason is its flexibility—riding the waves rather than fighting them. With that flexibility, we’ve adapted remarkably well to the market and transformed accordingly. Looking at the Korean market alone, the center has shifted from department stores to street shops, then to drugstores and e-commerce, and Amorepacific has adapted incredibly well each time. I think this comes from the flexible thinking of our people and leadership, even before any system—and that’s our greatest strength.

IOPE reached its 30th anniversary this year, and I started with the pressure of having to both preserve the legacy our predecessors built over that long time while simultaneously transforming the brand for a completely new era. The most rewarding moments are when tangible results prove our efforts.

For example, when we recently finalized our partnership agreement with Sephora, the global beauty retailer. We’d been watching for opportunities steadily over the past five or six years. As times changed and the international market started seeking out Korea’s high-performance skincare, IOPE’s clear identity as a ‘Clinical Grade brand' delivering high-performance anti-aging benefits aligned perfectly with the market. Our team spent six to eight months refining our strategy countless times. Everyone gave their absolute best and brought everything to a high level of polish, and we’re very confident. Seeing the direction we set receive recognition in the global market and being able to properly introduce Korea’s anti-aging powerhouse to the world—that’s been a gratifying moment for both the entire team and me.

When I started, I said I knew the IOPE brand, but I didn’t really understand it in detail. As I studied the brand and thought about it intensely, my life gradually aligned itself with IOPE. I connect every moment of my daily life to IOPE. When I’m walking down the street and see a great visual, or encounter a new product, or when something interesting happens, my first thought is, "How can we apply this to our brand?" When someone praises IOPE, I feel as happy as if it were about me, and conversely, when I hear criticism, it stings as if I’m being criticized personally. IOPE has become something like my avatar, you could say. These days, I think of it as my avatar entering the global market battlefield. Just as I survived and established myself working in France, Japan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, my biggest mission now is to help the IOPE brand successfully take root in unfamiliar territory.

I’d love to see more people who enjoy learning new things join us. The reality is, if yesterday and today are the same, tomorrow can’t suddenly be different. I want people who come in expecting tomorrow to be different because yesterday was different from today. But of course, no one knows whether the change you want will actually come tomorrow. What I’m looking for is just three things. First, someone who has a real desire for growth or change. Second, someone who realizes that if yesterday and today are the same, tomorrow will inevitably be the same too. And finally, someone who has the patience to persevere until they achieve the level of change they want. Life is short, but it’s also longer than you think. We’re going to spend eight hours a day at work anyway, so it would be genuinely enjoyable and fun to work with people who use that time productively while thinking about their own development.

That’s the most essential capability. The market changes too quickly for us to get by without effort and challenge. I started this career as a marketer. Some people call marketers communication specialists, psychology specialists, or brand specialists, but marketers are market specialists—specialists in the market itself. The market keeps changing, and not making an effort within that change would mean giving up on being a marketer.

People often ask where I draw inspiration from, but there’s no specific field. I strongly agree with director Martin Scorsese’s statement, which director Joonho Bong quoted at the Academy Awards: ‘The most personal is the most creative.’ The signals the world sends me are scattered everywhere. Exhibitions, dramas, YouTube, music, books... it could be anything. What matters is how I interpret it. You see as much as you know when you travel, and food tastes as good as you understand it, right? I think inspiration works the same way. The key is how much attention I pay to what’s happening around me and how I add my own experience to interpret it in my own way.
So I think the essence isn’t inspiration itself, but rather expanding the vessel that can interpret it. As my vessel of knowledge and experience grows, I can control the inspiration I draw from any event that comes my way. That’s my hypothesis, and it’s how I’ve worked until now. It doesn’t matter whether you know one thing deeply or many things broadly. You just need to understand that knowledge well enough to interpret the world with it. As my vessel grows, the elements that inspire expand infinitely.

I use XMD Serum frequently. Beyond the product’s inherent appeal—clinically proven with professional PDRN treatment-level results —I have even more affection for it because of the great difficulty level of its development process and the many barriers we had to break through to create it. I really hope many people will try it.

I actually thought hard about this question until 11 PM last night. Aristotle also made great efforts to define beauty, and he said there’s definitely a standard that people universally perceive as beautiful. My conclusion is similar. First, understanding what’s universally accepted as beauty, and then adding your own character on top of that. That’s what I think New Beauty is. Here is my definition of New Beauty as of now. My thinking might change later, but for now I believe this is right.

I’m also making a lot of effort for longevity. Beyond skincare, I believe a person’s unique presence is important, so I’m making a lot of effort to cultivate it. To maintain my shape and style without letting them deteriorate, I do high-intensity workouts three times a week and eat a salad for one meal a day. I’ve been doing this consistently for the past 15 years. I don’t get dermatological treatments. As the head of anti-aging products, I think it would be disingenuous to go to clinics for treatments, so I only manage my skin with IOPE.
I think that as you age, New Beauty requires more effort, but as long as you practice, there are definitely ways to do it. If you want New Beauty, just do what you already know.

As I mentioned briefly at the start of the interview, IOPE is ultimately a brand for two types of customers: legacy users who enjoy traditional skincare, and active users who combine it with dermatological treatments. Our goal is to help both groups use IOPE in a smart and effective way as they manage their skin. So my wish is for IOPE to become firmly established in the global market as a brand that genuinely helps with skin longevity and slow aging.

Thank you for loving IOPE. And to our future customers, we hope to become a brand you’re grateful to have found—today, in 10 years, and even more so in 20.  

"Amorepacific challenges and delivers by evolving."
We keep making efforts and continue to challenge ourselves. What we do isn’t rocket science. It’s not some special domain that requires innately talented people like those working in space. In our field, the more you do, the more you inevitably improve and develop your skills. In that sense, we’ll keep making efforts and taking on challenges.