Bringing your existing Korean routine to a dermatology appointment

The most useful thing you can bring to a dermatology appointment is an accurate list of everything already going on your face, including the products you assume are too gentle to matter. Photographs of ingredient lists work better than brand names, especially for imported Korean products a clinician outside Korea will not recognise. Every recommendation that follows is theirs to make; your job is to make sure they are working from real information.

Photograph the ingredient lists, not the bottles

A brand name tells a clinician nothing if the product is Korean and they are not. The ingredient list tells them everything, and Korean packaging carries a full 전성분 (jeonseongbun, 'full ingredient list') by law. Photograph the back of each product before the appointment. Where the list is printed in Korean only, most items are still recognisable INCI names transliterated into Hangul, and a translation app plus the pictures gets you most of the way. Include cleansers, sunscreen and anything from a bathhouse or hotel.

Declare the things that do not feel like skincare

Supplements, oral medications from other doctors, recent salon treatments, brow threading, waxing, home devices, LED masks, dermarollers, and anything a friend gave you from an unlabelled tube. Also declare what you are planning: a peel booked next month, a Korea trip built around clinic appointments, a wedding. Clinicians make different decisions when they know a laser is coming. Omitting things because they feel embarrassing or trivial is the main way a consultation goes wrong, and nobody in that room is judging your shelf.

Ask better questions than 'is this good?'

Useful ones: which of these should stop, and for how long. Which can stay. What should I expect in the first stretch, and what would count as a reaction rather than an adjustment. What do I do if that happens, and how do I reach you. When do things come back, and in what order. Is there anything here that makes me more sun-sensitive. If cost or availability is a constraint, say so — substitutions are usually possible and are better decided in the room.

If you are consulting in Korea as a visitor

Bring your product photographs and a written list of medications with generic names rather than brand names, since brands differ by country. Ask what the follow-up arrangement is if something goes wrong after you fly home, because the honest answer is often that a doctor where you live becomes responsible. Ask for the aftercare instructions in writing. Interpretation is available at many 피부과 (pibugwa, dermatology clinics) in Seoul, and it is worth requesting rather than improvising through a phone.

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✍️ Written & reviewed by the KoreaPlus Editorial team — dermatologist-informed, cosmetic-science researched & source-cited. Last reviewed: 2026-08-23.

General educational information using cosmetic structure-function wording — not medical advice. Always patch-test new actives. © KoreaPlus.