Beyond Anti-Ageing: Inside K-Beauty's Pivot to Age Management

[Editor's Note]

As the industry pivots from anti-ageing toward age management, how is K-beauty adapting? We spoke with JunBae Lee, Executive Director at COSMAX — a global leader in cosmetics ODM — about the rise of age management, technologies for addressing photoaging, and the ingredient and formulation breakthroughs to watch at this year's K-Beauty Zone.

The full conversation follows.

Q. Slow ageing and skin longevity have pushed age management into the spotlight. How does this differ from traditional anti-ageing?

Traditional anti-ageing was largely outcome-oriented — focused on erasing visible signs of ageing, such as wrinkles and pigmentation, as quickly as possible. What we’re seeing now is closer to a process-driven mindset: rather than resisting ageing, we accept it as a natural progression and manage it as we go.

It’s comparable to the shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism in the history of science. That shift was not simply about new discoveries; it fundamentally changed the way we understood the world. I’d argue dermatological science is undergoing the same kind of paradigm shift in how we understand ageing.

It is precisely during periods of transition like this that meaningful technical breakthroughs become possible. — in ingredients, in formulations, in evaluation methods, and in entirely new approaches we couldn’t have imagined before.

Q. In the era of age management, which technologies will define competitiveness?

Consumers today look closely at what genuinely sets a product apart, technically or substantively. For manufacturers, differentiation in ingredients and technology is the central challenge.

That said, differentiating at the raw-ingredient level is extraordinarily difficult for a manufacturer. So I place greater value on formulation technology — the ability to maximize a given ingredient’s efficacy and functionality through how it is delivered to the skin. If ingredient suppliers are focused on differentiating ingredients, manufacturers should be focused on differentiating formulations.

Formulation differentiation can be pursued in many ways — through sensorial feel, efficacy, visual appeal, and so on, depending on the objective. But in the age management category, what matters most is efficacy differentiation. Even when working with the same ingredient, the actual skin efficacy can vary dramatically depending on how the delivery system is engineered.

COSMAX has consistently developed efficacy-differentiating technologies built on a range of skin delivery systems — liposomes, nano-emulsions, and lipid nanocarriers, among others. That work has been recognized externally as well: we’ve presented in oral sessions at IFSCC (International Federation of Societies of Cosmetic Chemists) in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2025 and our delivery technologies have earned Korea’s New Excellent Technology (NET) certification, the IR52 Jang Young-sil Award, and the Innovation Award at Cosmoprof Bologna in 2024. This kind of accumulated technical capability is, I believe, what ultimately drives the cosmetics industry forward as a whole.

Q. In this new competitive landscape around age management, what advantages can K-beauty bring to the table?

Speed, adaptability, and a flexible collaborative structure. These are the qualities that have allowed our industry to bridge the gap between cosmetic science and the market itself.

Age management is wide open and intensely competitive — a red ocean with many players. In this kind of market, what matters is how quickly you can turn ideas into products, and how flexibly you can apply a single technology across multiple purposes. That’s exactly where K-beauty excels.

Our value chain is unusually collaborative — from raw materials and formulations to packaging and distribution. Add industry-academia partnerships and inter-company R&D into the mix, and you have a genuinely distinctive competitive foundation. The technology I’ll be presenting is itself a product of that environment.

Q. You’ll be giving a presentation titled “Photoaging: Mechanisms and protective strategy.” From a photoaging perspective, why should the focus shift from “post-damage repair” to “pre-damage prevention”?

There’s no use crying over spilled milk. I don’t think anyone would dispute that prevention beats repair after the damage is already done.

That said, I don’t believe “prevention” should be reduced to simply applying sunscreen. We already use UV filters in a wide range of situations, but the real meaning of “preventing damage” depends on the actual environments and conditions our skin is exposed to. Prevention strategies, going forward, need to evolve to respond dynamically to those conditions.

The technology I’ll be presenting at the seminar is exactly that — a new approach to UV protection that adapts to changes in the user’s environment. I expect we’ll see many more technologies pushing in this direction in the years ahead.

Q. Could you tell us about the new UV protection technology — one that responds to changes in the user’s environment?

In a single phrase: a seawater-resistant sunscreen formulation technology. Conventional water-resistant sunscreens are evaluated using freshwater conditions — essentially tap water. The technology I’ll be introducing is engineered to maintain its water resistance in seawater conditions as well.

The sunscreen market has been steadily moving toward O/W formulations, which deliver superior sensorial properties. The challenge is that O/W systems undergo re-emulsification on contact with water, making water resistance difficult to achieve. And even when an O/W formulation does achieve water resistance, seawater is often where it falls apart — because the various ions present in seawater can destabilize O/W systems.

This technology began with a reframing of the problem. Rather than treating the ions in seawater as the formulation’s adversary, we redefined them as allies — agents that could actually deliver superior water resistance. The result is a level of seawater resistance that was previously very difficult to achieve, and the same principle can also be applied to improve resistance to perspiration.

Even with identical UV filters, the SPF and PA performance a product ultimately delivers can vary completely depending on the formulation. What I’ll be presenting at this seminar is precisely that kind of technology — one that responds to the real-world environments in which consumers actually use sunscreen.

Q. You’re serving as a judge for this year’s awards at in-cosmetics Korea. What criteria will matter most to you?

The most important criterion, ultimately, is consumer benefit. What matters is the value the technology delivers to the consumer once it is realized as a finished product. Baseline efficacy and safety are non-negotiable, of course, but the story behind the ingredient and the technology matters just as much.

This is, in fact, the same question I’ve been grappling with throughout my career as a formulation researcher. Consumer benefit might mean efficacy and safety, or a superior sensorial experience, or sometimes a “wow” moment the consumer didn’t see coming. It can also mean a technology that delivers genuinely new value at a sensible price point.

A formulation researcher has to keep all of these possibilities open and pursue consumer value from multiple angles, not just one. I’m hoping to see entries that combine technical accomplishment with a compelling, persuasive consumer narrative.

COSMAX Executive Director Junbae Lee’s seminar will take place at the K-Beauty Zone at 10:30 a.m. on July 1, the first day of in-cosmetics Korea 2026.

To gain deeper insights into age management and technologies that address photoaging, pre-register now for free admission.

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