Number 1 Korean Beauty Products in 2026, Chart by Chart

At Olive Young, Mediheal’s Madecassoside Blemish Pad won the pad category of the retailer’s 2025 Awards, so by one chart it is the number one pad. Search for number 1 Korean beauty products in English and the same crown turns up on other products, across shop blogs, brand pages and Amazon listings. None of them is quite lying. Each “#1” belongs to one chart, and the charts count different things: what shoppers paid for, what reviewers rated, or what sold fastest in one marketplace subcategory.

So this list doesn’t crown a winner. It goes chart by chart. Each of the eight entries below held first place on a ranking whose publisher explains how it is counted, and each placement comes from CJ Olive Young’s award announcements and newsroom, Korean press coverage and the brands’ own reports of the results, and from Hwahae’s award and ranking pages. Amazon’s own seller guide covers what its badge means.

Quick answers

• There is no official number 1 Korean beauty product, because every “#1” claim belongs to one chart, one category and one time window.
• Olive Young’s 2025 Awards were picked from 180 million purchases made between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025, and named 166 products across 40 categories.
• Hwahae ranks products by user reviews and star ratings rather than sales, while Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank counts sales volume and ignores reviews entirely.

How the Number 1 Korean Beauty Products Get Counted

A “#1” label only means first place on one specific chart, and the three charts worth knowing each measure something different.

Chart	Who publishes it	What it counts	Time window
Olive Young Awards	CJ Olive Young, the Korean health and beauty chain	Customer purchases, combined with the retailer’s read of category trends	12 months; the 2025 edition used July 2024 to June 2025
Hwahae Awards and ranking	Hwahae, a Korean cosmetics review app	Reviews, star ratings and repurchases, with award entries screened by a four-stage review check	Awards twice a year; the annual Beauty Award runs November to October
Amazon Best Sellers Rank	Amazon	Sales volume only, with recent sales weighted more heavily	Updated frequently

The practical consequence shows up in a single category. Olive Young’s purchase-based award put Round Lab’s toner first in 2025, while Hwahae’s review-based ranking had Tony Moly’s toner first on October 22, 2026. Neither chart is wrong. They answer different questions: what shoppers bought most at one retailer over a year, and what a review app’s users rated highest at one moment.

Amazon’s version is narrower still. Its seller guide, dated September 2025, says Best Sellers Rank is calculated from sales volume, that recent sales count more than older ones, and that page views and customer reviews play no part. The “#1 Best Seller” badge goes to a product that meets an ordering threshold and ranks first in a category with at least 100 products, which means a K-beauty listing can earn it by leading one narrow subcategory.

1. Round Lab 1025 Dokdo Toner: Olive Young’s No. 1 Toner

Round Lab’s 1025 Dokdo Toner won the toner and mist category at the 2025 Olive Young Awards. It is also the product the brand was built on. CJ’s newsroom says Round Lab started in 2017 with this toner, and that in 2023 the brand’s annual sales at Olive Young passed ₩100 billion for the first time.

The award’s method explains why an everyday toner does so well. The Olive Young Awards, first held in 2015, are counted from purchases: the 2024 edition drew on about 160 million of them, against roughly 10 million a decade earlier. A sales count rewards whatever goes into the most baskets, so a product that gets used up and replaced has a built-in edge over a niche treatment.

2. Aestura Atobarrier365 Cream: First by Sales, Near the Top by Reviews

Aestura’s Atobarrier365 Cream took the cream category at the Olive Young Awards in both 2024 and 2025, and on October 22, 2026 it stood second on Hwahae’s overall cosmetics ranking. That makes it one of the few entries here that two very different methods agree on.

The two signals are independent of each other. Olive Young counts what people paid for, and Hwahae counts what its users wrote and rated after using it. A product that leads on both is being bought in volume and rated well by the people who used it, which is a stronger case than either chart makes alone. Popularity still isn’t fit, though: on a Korean shelf, the skin-type words printed on the label narrow the field faster than any ranking.

3. Torriden Dive-In Serum: Winner in a Category That Changes Hands

Torriden’s Dive-In Low Molecular Hyaluronic Acid Serum topped the essence and serum category of the 2025 Olive Young Awards. A year earlier the same spot belonged to Goodal’s Green Tangerine Vita C Dark Spot Care Serum.

The year attached to an award needs a close look too. The 2025 edition covered purchases from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025 and was announced on November 28, 2025, so a “2025 winner” partly describes what people bought in the second half of 2024. Torriden took a second category the same year, with its Dive-In sheet mask first in masks, and it had also won an award in the mask category in 2024.

4. Mediheal Madecassoside Blemish Pad: Olive Young’s No. 1 Pad Two Years Running

Mediheal’s Madecassoside Blemish Pad came first in Olive Young’s pad category in 2024 and again in 2025. In 2024 it also won in the newly created Global Trend category, which CJ built from 580,000 purchases on Olive Young’s global online mall. Toner pads are pre-soaked cotton rounds you swipe across the face or leave on as a short mask.

Mediheal’s record runs deeper than one product. In December 2024, CJ’s newsroom noted that the brand had won at every Olive Young Awards since the first edition in 2015, a ten-year streak that made it one of five Hall of Fame brands that year, alongside Mise en Scène, Bioderma, Isoi and Clio. When a brand rather than a product claims “No. 1”, the useful follow-up is which product, and which year.

5. Round Lab Birch Juice Moisturizing Sun Cream: Two Years Atop Sun Care

Round Lab’s Birch Juice Moisturizing Sun Cream won the sun care category at the Olive Young Awards in 2024 and 2025. Round Lab therefore holds two of the categories on this list at the same time, toner and sunscreen.

That is why “Round Lab is No. 1 in Korea” is too vague to check, while “Round Lab’s sun cream won Olive Young’s 2025 sun care category” is a claim anyone can check against the published results. If you pick up either one in Seoul, the branches that offer it let a tourist have the tax taken off at the till.

6. Ma:nyo Pure Cleansing Oil: Olive Young’s 2025 Cleansing Winner

Ma:nyo Factory’s Pure Cleansing Oil was named first in the cleansing category at the 2025 Olive Young Awards. Beplain’s Mung Bean pH-Balanced Cleansing Foam, a different kind of cleanser, sat fourth on Hwahae’s overall ranking on October 22, 2026.

The two charts also cut the shelf differently. Olive Young’s 2025 results name one first place for cleansing as a whole, while Hwahae’s Beauty Award names first to third place within much narrower sub-categories. The more finely a chart slices its categories, the more “#1” products it creates, and a chart that never says how it slices them can produce as many winners as it likes.

7. Anua PDRN Hyaluronic Acid Capsule 100 Serum: Hwahae’s 2025 Beauty Award

Anua’s PDRN Hyaluronic Acid Capsule 100 Serum heads the all-categories view of Hwahae’s 2025 Beauty Award, the review app’s once-a-year award, counted from November 1, 2024 to October 31, 2025. Hwahae says its winners come only from user data (reviews, star ratings and repurchases), with no expert panel and no brand marketing involved, and that they are confirmed only after a four-stage review screening, in which abusive reviews are filtered out before the remaining reviews are scored.

Because the Beauty Award honours the top three in each sub-category, it hands out a lot of medals. For a stricter test, Hwahae keeps a Hall of Fame for products that have taken first place in a Beauty Award category at least three times. Its 2025 list held 8 products, among them d’Alba’s White Truffle First Spray Serum. A product in that group has topped a review chart repeatedly, which says more than a single good season.

8. Tony Moly Wonder Ceramide Mochi Toner: Hwahae’s No. 1 in October 2026

On October 22, 2026, Tony Moly’s Wonder Ceramide Mochi Toner was first on Hwahae’s overall cosmetics ranking, the page Hwahae titles its 2026 top 100. It also sat second, behind Anua’s serum, in the all-categories view of the 2025 Beauty Award.

Set it beside entry one and the whole problem with “number 1” fits inside a single category. Olive Young’s purchase data crowns Round Lab’s toner; Hwahae’s review data crowns Tony Moly’s. Both charts are published by the companies that run them, and both are real. Hwahae’s ranking page shows the date it was last updated, which is the first thing to look for in any screenshot of it. Which K-beauty names are selling outside Korea right now is a separate, faster-moving story.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does the “#1 Best Seller” badge on Amazon mean for K-beauty?

It means the product met an ordering threshold and ranked first by sales in one Amazon category with at least 100 products, according to Amazon’s September 2025 seller guide. That category can be a narrow subcategory, and reviews play no part in it.

Q: Can I check Olive Young’s best sellers in English?

Yes. Olive Young’s global site has a Best Sellers page that, when checked in October 2026, described itself as updated daily based on sales data, with a Top in Korea tab built from Olive Young’s online and offline sales in Korea. It is a live sales list, not the annual award.

Q: Do brands pay to win the Hwahae Awards?

Hwahae says no: winners are chosen only from consumer data, without expert judging or brand marketing, and award entries go through a four-stage review check. It does not publish the exact scoring formula, so the method can be described but not recalculated from outside.

Q: When does Olive Young announce its awards?

The 2025 edition was announced on November 28, 2025, and Olive Young built its November 30 to December 6 promotion around the winners, tied to the Olive Young Sale.

Q: Is the product that tops every chart the best one for my skin?

Not necessarily. Charts measure how many people bought or liked something, not whether it suits a particular skin type, so the skin-type line on the label matters more than the rank beside it.

Start with entry one: pick the category you actually shop for, look up its Olive Young winner, then check where that product sits on Hwahae before you trust any “#1” sticker.