About Me

About Me (Korean: 어바웃미) is a South Korean skincare brand owned by Samyang Corporation, part of the Samyang Group conglomerate. It is based in the Pangyo district of Seongnam, in Gyeonggi Province, and positions itself as a clean-beauty label built on naturally sourced, food-derived ingredients. The brand draws on Samyang Group's long background in food, chemicals and biopharmaceuticals, applying that material-science expertise to cosmetics.

The brand launched in 2012 [7] and remains active, selling through its own Korean e-commerce site, domestic retail, and a network of international K-beauty stockists. In 2021 it renewed its identity around the idea of "clean beauty," a repositioning that Samyang's corporate press described as a new start nine years after the original launch [11].

About Me operates under Samyang Corporation, the trading arm of Samyang Group. The group dates its own founding to 1924, and some third-party retailer profiles describe About Me as "the beauty brand of Samyang group that was founded in 1924" [6]. That date refers to the parent company rather than the cosmetics brand: independent sources, including the Australian retailer Nudie Glow, record the brand itself as "established in 2012 by the Samyang Corporation" [7], and Samyang's own framing of the 2021 relaunch as coming "nine years since its launch" is consistent with a 2012 start [11]. The founders of the brand are not publicly disclosed, which is common for corporate-backed Korean labels developed inside a larger company rather than by an individual.

Alongside About Me, Samyang's cosmetics business runs a sister brand, MediAnswer, described by the parent company as a "dermo-bio" line that combines Samyang's biotechnology with input from skin specialists [5]. The two brands share the group's research base, and some of MediAnswer's technology is also associated with About Me's wider range.

About Me frames its approach around a return to basics. Its brand story speaks of moments in a complicated daily life "when we must return to basics," and the company says it works by extracting beneficial ingredients from natural materials and refining them through careful, clean methods. The stated mission is to support what it calls a "valuable beauty life."

The brand's parent company summarises About Me as a "clean beauty brand which uses naturally-sourced ingredients to provide clean and effective products," adding that "by using sustainable materials, opposing animal testing and using clean natural ingredients, About Me offers a valuable and clean beauty life" [5]. A short tagline associated with the brand, "Different Ingredients, Different Results," reflects the same emphasis on what goes into each formula [6]. In market terms the range sits at an accessible, drugstore price level rather than as a premium line.

About Me's catalogue is organised by product type, by skin concern, and by named ingredient lines. Among its better-known collections are Forest Hydration, Rice Makgeolli, Bee Clean, Kakadu C and Maple Sera, each built around a particular hero ingredient. The Forest Hydration Cream and the Rice Makgeolli Cleansing Foam are listed among the brand's best sellers.

Several products lean on ingredients tied to Korean tradition or to food science. The Rice Makgeolli line uses fermented rice extract, drawing on makgeolli, a traditional Korean rice drink, for a gentle, milky toner and a cleansing foam. Other lines use kakadu plum as a vitamin C source, blue tansy for sensitive skin, and maple sap. This food-to-skincare framing connects directly to the brand's origins inside a group whose core business includes food production.

The sister brand MediAnswer extends the range into more treatment-focused territory. Its Collagen Firming Up Mask is a hydrogel sheet mask that, according to product descriptions, contains a high proportion of collagen extract sourced from France, alongside amino acids, peptides and damask rose water. An independent review by the K-beauty blog Oh My Stellar noted that MediAnswer's products use a "Transdermal Delivery System" (TDS), a drug-delivery technology attributed to the group's pharmaceutical arm, Samyang Biopharm, intended to help active ingredients absorb more deeply into the skin [8].

Clean beauty is central to how About Me describes itself, and the company makes several ethics-related claims. It markets a dedicated vegan product line on its site and states that it opposes animal testing [5]. Retailer profiles describe its formulas as made without parabens, synthetic fragrances or harmful chemicals [9].

The brand also runs an empty-bottle collection campaign, part of what it calls its Clean Beauty Life initiative, in which customers receive benefits according to the number of empty bottles they return. The company presents this as a recycling and circular-economy effort tied to its membership programme. The brand has separately been noted in Samyang corporate news for donating cosmetic products to the Korean charity retail chain Beautiful Store [13]. Specific third-party vegan or cruelty-free certifications are not identified in the available material.

About Me is an active brand. Its Korean e-commerce site continues to operate with current product lines, promotional campaigns and customer service, and the brand is stocked internationally through K-beauty retailers in markets including Australia, Canada and the Netherlands. Its continued backing by Samyang Group, a large Korean conglomerate, underpins this multi-region presence.