What makes K-beauty Korean? The answer is getting complicated.

K-pop has long since found a home outside of Korea, embracing foreign artists, producers and sounds under an increasingly global umbrella. Now K-beauty is undergoing a similar transformation, as brands born thousands of miles from Seoul embrace Korean names, ingredients and formulas — and the "K-beauty" moniker.

Yepoda, hwarang', Ondo and MiiN, and the list goes on and on. 

Yepoda, derived from the Korean word for "pretty," operates out of Berlin. The Finland-based hwarang' takes the name from the elite youth corps of the Silla Dynasty (57 B.C. to A.D. 935). Ondo Beauty 36.5 was drawn up in Barcelona by the retailer MiiN Cosmetics, tapping the Korean words for "temperature" and "beautiful woman," respectively. SeoulCeuticals, an American label, skips the vocabulary lesson and borrows the Korean capital's name outright.

Each borrows differently. Yepoda takes the whole stack: from the name to formulation, the factory and packaging. hwarang' runs a hybrid system, pairing Korean heritage ingredients with solutions to dermatological problems caused by the Nordic climate.

MiiN keeps the Korean supply chain and wraps European retail around it, casting itself as translator. SeoulCeuticals borrows only the signifier, naming itself for a city it does not manufacture in. All of them are selling to local customers who want K-beauty without the shipping wait, rather than to Koreans.

Some of the Korean connection is literal. hwarang' was founded by a Korean man and his Finnish wife, and the company says seven of its eight staff members are Korean, two of them based in Korea. But the deeper connection is in the bottles.

Yepoda's link to Korea comes in the form of its founder, Sander Joonyoung van Bladel, who is half Korean.

But the deeper connection is in its bottles. Everything Yepoda sells has been developed and manufactured in Korea since its first order, the company said. One product pairs kimchi exosomes with vegan PDRN, an ingredient list that would look at home in a Gangnam clinic. Even the packaging is designed and sourced locally.

“We don't work off a catalog; every formula is custom developed,” Yepoda said. “We bring the clean-formulation brief, the ingredient standards and the clinical testing protocols, and our Korean partners bring the manufacturing excellence and decades of active-ingredient innovation that exists nowhere else at this level.”

hwarang' reaches further back. Its formulas are built on omija, yuja and ogok (five-grain blend), ingredients with long histories in Korean kitchens and short ones in cosmetics, with a bokbunja (traditional Korean blackberry wine) lip mask on the way. The company said the omija came from Mungyeong, North Gyeongsang, which a member of the founding family visits at least once a year.

Nothing moves quickly there. A single product takes close to two years from concept to production, made with Korea-based cosmetic manufacturers like NFC, Cosmecca or Kolmar depending on the item. “We are the ones who create the concept, texture, ingredients and ratios,” the company said, “and then develop, test and refine it together with the manufacturer.”

The Nordic half of the brand is not decoration either. hwarang' said its formulas were built for skin that cannot hold water, a problem it encountered directly: Koreans who move to Finland often develop dry patches and eczema in a region with some of the world's highest rates of dry skin conditions. Korean resilience meeting Finnish sisu, a concept referring to the stoic Nordic determination, as the company puts it.

MiiN's contribution is closer to interpretation. It runs more than 55 stores across Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and Germany, with 70 planned by the year's end and close to 400 staff, and says sales have grown about 40 percent a year over three years. Its own labels, Ondo Beauty 36.5 among them, are conceived in Barcelona and manufactured in Korea with partners including Cosmecca and Cosmax.

It also does the thing Korean beauty retail does better than anyone: educate. Its stores and channels are built around explaining what skin needs rather than simply selling it something. As for the name, MiiN said it interprets it loosely. “Beauty has never been about fitting into a single standard.”

All are riding a boom. Korean cosmetics exports hit $11.4 billion last year, pushing the country past the United States into second place behind France, and the fastest growth came from exactly the places these brands call home, with exports to Europe up 62.4 percent in the first half of the year.

Some of it is heading back. hwarang', which expects European revenue of about 5 million euros ($5.8 million) this year, well over the 1.2 million euros logged last year, launched in Korea in August of last year and forecasts Korean sales of around 500 million won ($364,000). It lands at Musinsa this month and will open a pop-up at Hyundai Department Store in October, introducing the country to a Finnish brand selling Korean-made skincare to Koreans.

Which leaves a question the industry has not settled: What actually makes something K-beauty? Ownership, manufacturing, formulation or simply the look?

The three answer it differently. Yepoda said it would welcome clearer criteria, arguing that making everything here is what separates it from brands that only borrow the references.

hwarang', perhaps in classic Finnish reservedness, was unbothered.

“I don't think our role is to decide where the exact boundary of K-beauty should be,” the company said.

MiiN put the weight on honesty.

“We have never hidden the fact that MiiN is a Barcelona-based company,” it said. “Consumers should know where a brand comes from, where its products are developed and manufactured, and what its relationship with Korea genuinely is.”

There is precedent for all of it, running the other way. Korean companies spent two decades reaching for names that sounded French, Italian or English, back when those countries held the prestige: Innisfree, Laneige, Etude, Missha.

The traffic isn't new. Only the direction has changed.

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [kim.minyoung5@joongang.co.kr]