Donginbi

Donginbi is a South Korean prestige skincare brand built around red ginseng, owned by Korea Ginseng Corporation (KGC) and based in Daejeon [5]. Its products are formulated around extracts of six-year-cultivated Korean red ginseng, the same raw material behind KGC's long-running ginseng health business. The brand remains active, selling through its own e-commerce sites in Korean, English and Chinese and through an Amazon storefront for the United States market.

The year attached to the brand is itself a point worth untangling. KGC and Donginbi date the name to 1899, describing the line as "reborn in 1899" on the philosophy of red ginseng for external use [3]. That 1899 figure traces KGC's heritage in Korean red ginseng rather than the launch of the modern cosmetics range; the present-day Donginbi skincare brand is generally placed in the 2010s, after KGC obtained its Daejeon e-commerce licence in 2010 [3][1]. The "1899" also recurs in product naming, as in the 1899 Signature Oil.

Donginbi belongs to Korea Ginseng Corporation, the company behind the Cheong Kwan Jang (Jung Kwan Jang) red ginseng brand [5]. KGC operates Donginbi within its cosmetics division and frames the skincare line as an extension of that ginseng research heritage, with Cheong Kwan Jang described by one report as a "121-year-old red ginseng brand" [5]. The corporation has since added Lab 1899, a vegan-positioned sister line launched after 2020 for the United States market; the shared "1899" tag links it to the same lineage.

Donginbi's stated idea is one of continuity between ingestible and topical ginseng. The company expresses it as the notion that "true beauty begins with ingesting red ginseng and leads to red ginseng that you put on," applying KGC's decades of ginseng science to skincare [3]. The line is positioned as premium "red ginseng cosmetics" aimed at K-beauty buyers and consumers drawn to skincare rooted in traditional Korean medicine, with retail prices on Amazon reported between roughly 28 and 170 US dollars [4].

The range centres on red ginseng in several forms. According to the brand, three core materials underpin its formulas: red ginseng oil, red ginseng condensed water, and red ginseng extract [3]. KGC describes the oil as made by a "one drop per root" concentration method, the condensed water as a steam-based extraction it ties to ancestral practice, and the extract as a refinement of techniques developed from 1912. The ginseng is drawn from six-year-old roots from Cheong Kwan Jang's cultivation.

At its 2020 Amazon launch the brand offered around 20 skincare products, among them the 1899 Single Essence, the 1899 Signature Oil, the Red Ginseng Power Repair Intense Eye Cream, the Red Ginseng Moisture & Balancing Emulsion and the Red Ginseng Daily Defense Essence [5][4]. KGC's promotional material attributes effects such as increased firmness, elasticity and brightness, along with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, to the ginseng actives [4].

Coverage of Donginbi has centred on its international expansion rather than awards. In September 2020 KGC opened an independent Donginbi brand store on Amazon to reach American shoppers, a move reported by both The Korea Times and PR Newswire [5][4]. The company had already been selling red ginseng products on Amazon since 2015 [5]. No industry awards are recorded in the available sources.

Donginbi is an active brand. Its e-commerce site operates in three languages, its Amazon US storefront remains in place, and the post-2020 introduction of the Lab 1899 sister line points to continued investment in KGC's cosmetics portfolio.