Cultivated for thousands of years in Korea, the soybean is both a crop and food, and for that reason, it has become inseparable from Korean food culture and features prominently on the dining tables of Korean people. For Korean people, the soybean has long been the main source of protein, which would otherwise be lacking in a traditional diet. In addition, using soybean-fermented foods such as soybean paste and soy sauce, Korean people were able to enrich the flavors of other Korean foods, while also significantly improving their storability. Tofu, which is coagulated soy protein, and bean sprouts, which are made by germinating soybeans, are widely used in a variety of Korean cuisine. In terms of utility, it seems safe to say that there isn't any food ingredient more important to Korean food culture than the soybean.

Of all the techniques associated with culinary culture to use soybeans, what Korean people excel at more than anything else is the art of making soybean-fermented foods. This argument is supported by historical records of the Three Kingdoms period of Korea. In many history books documenting the period such as The Story of Goguryeo (高句麗傳) from The Book of Liang (梁書) and The Nansi (南史), and The Book of Wei : The Story of Dong Yi (魏志東夷傳) from The Records of the Three Kingdoms (三國志), there are accounts saying that the people of Goguryeo liked to keep things clean and were good at jangyang (藏釀). Here, jangyang is a general term referring to fermented foods and related processes, including brewing liquor, making soybean-fermented foods (soybean paste, hot pepper paste, soy sauce), and pickled vegetables (kimchi). The historical accounts indicate that Korean people have been excellent at making soybean-fermented foods since at least the Goguryeo period. Such an approach to the soybean differs widely from that of the West, where the soybean was traditionally considered an industrial crop used mainly for its protein and oil content, which in turn demonstrates the ingenuity and excellence of Korean food culture.

It would be accurate to say that 1994 was when Amorepacific set out to discover new beauty values in the soybean. The research conducted at that time led to the discovery of 'soypol,' which is a material still widely used today as a natural moisturizing substance. In 1990, there weren't any respectable cosmetics manufacturer in Korea, and most Korean companies used raw materials imported from Japan. Of those raw materials, a fermented soybean polymer called γ-PGA produced by a manufacturer particularly caught our attention. γ-PGA is a white-thread-like substance that stretches like a cobweb in cheonggukjang (fermented soybean paste). It is a large natural polymer containing an amino acid called glutamic acid.

γ-PGA is a natural substance that's highly effective at moisturizing the skin, and yet, in Korea in the 1990s, there wasn't any manufacturer capable of producing it. We made the localization of the substance our mission and set out to conduct joint research with Amorepacific's Ansan Biochemistry Division. Back then, developing a fermentation technique based on single microbial strains without the problem of microbial contamination and establishing a purification process for producing high-purity γ-PGA required a considerable level of technological capability. After about two years of hard work and numerous trials and errors, we finally obtained — for the first time in Korea — a technique necessary for resolving our most persistent problems, such as contamination due to other microbial strains and the taste change of raw materials. The newly developed raw material was named 'soypol,' and its name evolved into 'soypol Plus'. Soypol is a compound word of 'soy,' which means a soybean, and 'pol(y),' which means a polymer. The fact that it's still widely used today as a natural moisturizing substance for skincare products makes soypol more than qualified to become the first material of our soybean-originated heritage.

The next thing we will be looking at is our research on isoflavone, the most well-known of all bioactive substances after the soybean. Isoflavone is a substance commonly found in legumes. In soybeans, isoflavone exists in the form of a glycoside, which is where glucose is bonded to daidzein and genistein. However, compared to the glycoside form which contains glucose, the aglycon type is free of glucose and is vastly superior when it comes to its skincare effectiveness. Amorepacific thus began research to produce aglycon-type isoflavone. By developing a technique for manufacturing an isoflavone aglycon rid of glucose with the use of microbial fermentation in 1999, we succeeded in developing a new raw material called 'bio-isogen', which contains high levels of soybean isoflavone aglycon. After verifying isoflavone aglycon's effectiveness at reducing skin wrinkles and skin tightening, Amorepacific filed a patent in 2003 on composition for externally applied cosmetics containing isoflavone aglycon. This 'bio-isogen' material was then applied to Mamonde Total Solution Cream.

The next fruit of Amorepacific's soybean research is ODI, which was applied to HYOSIAH as a key benefiting substance. ODI is short for Ortho-DihydroxyIsoflavone, which is a substance created by optionally adding the –OH chemical structure to isoflavone. There's an interesting story to the discovery of this substance: one day, Amorepacific's researchers found out that some cancer patients specifically ate soybean paste that had been fermented for at least 5 years for the treatment of their cancer. The researchers became curious as to what unique substances a 5-year-old soybean paste contained, and after searching every corner of Korea, they eventually procured a medical-purpose soybean paste that had been fermented for more than 5 years. The results from compositional analysis of the soybean paste showed that it contained a substance called ODI that was not found in ordinary soybean paste. Further research revealed that ODI is created from microbial fermentation in soybeans and that isoflavone changes to ODI at a very slow rate.

In addition, research conducted on the skin-related efficacy of ODI showed that ODI has far higher levels of effectiveness for anti-oxidizing, brightening, and anti-aging than ordinary soybean isoflavone. Such ODI research results were published in 7 SCI papers, making the research study the one that resulted in the highest number of papers among all single-topic research studies conducted by Amorepacific. ODI can only be obtained from soybean pastes fermented for 5 years or longer, and such old soybean pastes are indeed rare to find. To commercialize ODI as a raw material in skincare products, Amorepacific began searching for a microbe that could accelerate isoflavone's change to ODI and optimize fermentation techniques that used the microbe. Following these developments, Amorepacific embarked on the development of soybean-fermented materials containing ODI. As of 2016, Amorepacific's ODI research is centered on developing techniques capable of obtaining regular amounts of high-purity ODI, and the company plans to apply the outcome of the research to developing its future soybean cosmetic products.