Besides Blackpink and BTS, my favorite Korean import is skin care—effective, elegant, advanced skin care, much of it promising glass skin. In addition to cleansing, moisturizing, exfoliating, and religiously applying sunscreen, the path to that translucent skin is paved with generous layers of serums, essences, and toners, each containing ingredients that are often more effective the deeper they penetrate the surface of the skin.
There’s a group of ingredients from Korea that claim to make that penetration possible. They’re small, needle-like particles called “spicules” or “reedles,” made of silica from sea sponges. Theoretically, they work like micro-needling by creating small holes that allow ingredients to travel into the skin. Unlike those micro-needles, however, the silica stays lodged in the skin for days until it’s shed naturally, along with your dead cells.
