Makeup Sales to Men on Rise in Korea

Korean Men Are Buying Into Makeup

In Korea, metrosexuality is still going strong, and many guys are now turning to makeup to look good at the office and out at night. Apparently, smoky eye makeup has become a common sight on guys out in clubs, and sales of eye cream and other skincare products are way up.
Even in the macho world of the military, "color lotion" (aka tinted moisturizer) has been common for years. In fact, makeup and grooming are becoming so popular that cosmetic company Amore Pacific has even opened a flagship men's makeup and skincare boutique in Seoul.
It's interesting to me that men in Japan and Korea seem to have fewer hangups about makeup than their American counterparts generally do. Despite attempts to popularize makeup for men in Europe and the States, it just hasn't caught on. (Witness the lack of buzz over Jean Paul Gaultier's dude-friendly bronzers.) Do you think men can pull off a bit of makeup just as well as women, or is it a hard sell?

Korean Male Idol Smokey Eyes Make Up

Oct 14, 2010 Author: admin | Filed under: Korean Make Up

Smoky makeup has very popular in Korea male idol nowadays. Smoky eyes have become a classic party eye makeup look. The secret of this trend’s popularity is that smoky eyes can change your face dramatically, transforming the boy next door idol into a wild manly hot guy.
Who are the celebrities that are famous for their smoky makeup? From a short while ago , Brown Eyed Girls’ member Gain, Lee Hyori, and 2NE1‘s Park Bom are the girl idols who are famous for their makeup. However, for the new smoky make-up style these male idol groups come up first; Big Bang, 2PM, B2ST, U-KISS. Recent care in the fashion and beauty have resulted in “grooming” idols and thicker make-up.
Among male idols, the “eyeline” has become a trend. Big Bang’s T.O.P brought the popularity of the eyeline among male idols, by looking more bolder and stronger. While Big Bang were doing individual activities, 2Pm, B2ST, MBLAQ, ZE:A , and U-KISS brought their own style of “bold eyeline”. Singer Rain, brought a bolder look with his drawn eyelashes.

While Smoky Makeup is the best way to show one has already turned from boy into man. There are male stars who are further emphasizing their sexy charm with edgy smoky make up. Woman’s heart wavers at their dark eyes.
When we look at idol group members today, we feel that they’ve somehow matured. In addition to their singing, masculine style complete their masculinity. Among them, dark smoky make up definitely works the magic.
One of the first idol groups to use smoky eye makeup is Big Bang. T.O.P’s sexy charisma was emphasized with his thick eyebrows and smoky make up. Taeyang also followed the style while promoting “I Need A Girl” in order to give off the feel of maturity.
The style is also highly effective for Jung Yong Hwa’s signature gazes towards the camera, easily enabling him to capture the audience.
Super Junior’s Lee Teuk and Big Bang’s G Dragon are known pretty boys of the industry for their soft looks. By wearing smoky eye makeup, the two were able to upgrade their manliness by giving off a sharp feel from their eyes.
Smokey Eyes, from cute boyish into fierce and wild

Lee Min Ho
In the Entertainment business, Beastly Idols with makeup is the Trend. In dramas, the actors focus on their abs, while for the artists, fans are won over by both the abs and thick eyeliner worn by Beastly Idols. For 3-4 minutes, the singers have to show off a strong performance, especially for the beastly idols who have become the trend for the entertainment buisness.
For several cute and boyish idol, Smokey Eyes are effective to turn their appearances becoming totally different. The example idols are Lee Minho and Onew. The makeup also gives a deeper edge to Minho’s cute boyish charms, along with giving Onew a more fierce image on stage compared to his innocent, calm features without it.
The members of MBLAQ use the style often when wearing black suits, easily capturing the attention of the audience with their clean, sharp style.
Some of Korean Male Idol in Smokey Eyes make up

Eunhyuk

G Dragon

Jang Geun Suk

Kim Jeong Hoon

Lee Jun Ki

RyeoWook

Big Bang’s T.O.P brought the popularity of the eyeline among male idols, by looking more bolder and stronger.

Wheesung

Yoo Seung Ho

Gay actor stuns S Korea

Wednesday, 1 November, 2000, 12:41 GMT

Gay actor stuns S Korea

Hong Seok-chun has lost TV work

By Seoul correspondent Caroline Gluck A South Korean television actor has made history by becoming the first public figure in the country to openly admit he is homosexual.

Our audience are too young to be exposed to homosexuality

Kim Churl-young, children's programme director

Hong Seok-chun's announcement, which has already lost him work, has created huge controversy in a country where any discussion of sexuality is rare. Mr Hong was famous as a presenter on a children's television show.
But since coming out, he has been taken off air - and has also lost work on other TV and radio programmes.

Hong Seok-chun: Tired of double life

However, Mr Hong says he could no longer go on living a lie. "I was angry at the fact that in Korea no one wants to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality. Even if they learn about it they think its dirty and treat homosexuals badly," he says.
"Working on a children's programme, I couldn't keep my secret forever. I wanted to be a good example to the children by being honest and that's why I came out."
Changing attitudes
Mr Hong says he was pressured to leave the show because he was told his public image was inappropriate for children.

I tried to keep my gay life a secret, but living a double life was really stressful

Hong Seok-chun

But the programme denies this and says gays do not face discrimination. "If Hong Seok-chun had come out 20 years earlier, he would have been kicked out of his neighbourhood," says children's programme director Kim Churl-young.
"But now Korean society is not as rigid - he has appeared on television since he came out and it shows that people are ready to accept the views of minorities."
Protest
The actor's case has been headline news and opened an unprecedented debate about sexuality.
The term "coming out" has even entered the Korean language.

Kim Churl-young: Attitudes have changed

After his announcement, an alliance of gay and human rights organisations called a press conference to throw their support behind the actor and call for greater tolerance. They also vowed to demonstrate outside television stations which had taken him off air, accusing them of violating his human and legal rights.
"[In Korea] homosexuality just means some kind of very obscene and promiscuous sexual activity," says gay rights activist Seo Dong-jin.
"Homosexual people should be recognised as a kind of social group in our society."
Confucian
Although there is an active gay scene in many of South Korea's larger cities, it is not something that is openly discussed.
Most gays are still unwilling to come out of the closet - fearful of the consequences in a highly conservative society.
South Korea is one of the strongest Confucian societies in Asia and places great importance on family and the need to continue the ancestral line.
Although Mr Hong has lost most of his regular work, he makes a guest appearance on a late-night TV sit-com.
But Mr Hong is a public figure. Most gays live far from the media spotlight and until attitudes change, they remain condemned to a twilight existence.

'There are no gays in Korea'

'There are no gays in Korea': When I first moved to Korea, even now sometimes, I was convinced every man I met was hitting on me, says Lebogang Mogashoa.

Will homosexuality be accepted in barracks?

Will homosexuality be accepted in barracks? A gay soldier kisses his boyfriend in a public place in a scene from the movie "Just Friends" The Constitution Court is studying whether prohibiting homosexuality in the military is unconstitutional. / Korea Times file By Bae Ji-sook Staff reporter Should gay soldiers have the same rights as their heterosexual peers? The Constitutional Court is expected to soon decide whether Article 92 of the Military Law stipulating the punishment of homosexual soldiers is a violation of their constitutional rights. A relevant public hearing is scheduled at the nation's highest court this week. Reactions are mixed over the issue since the military is one of the most conservative and exclusive organizations here, and any changes may influence overall Korean society where many homosexuals suffer from extreme prejudice and discrimination. While gay activists and civic groups are calling for the abolishment of the law, insisting that sexuality is irrelevant in terms of performance, conservatives are concerned that allowing same-sex relationships would trigger conflict, bringing down overall military discipline. To the surprise of many people, the petition was filed by a military court in 2008, which claimed that regulating an individual's sexual preference is a violation of the rights to decide one's sexual behavior and of one's privacy. The case was ignited when a 27 year-old sergeant was indicted for "habitually sexually assaulting" his subordinate. According to military law, those who have a sexual relationship with a member of the same sex are subject to a year imprisonment. Homosexual intercourse is described as the "mating of chickens." The court ruled him innocent, saying that homosexuality isn't subject to any regulation because it is strictly personal. Supporters of the abolishment say the law conflicts with the Constitutional rights of a human. "In European Union states, except for Greece, homosexuals performing military service is accepted. In Australia and many other countries, they are allowed to openly serve in the military," lawyer Jung Jung-hoon said. There are currently 53 countries prohibiting gay soldiers, including China, Yemen and Iran. The Barrack Obama administration, which has widely publicized its pledges for homosexual, has recently decided to abolish the so-called "Don't ask, don't tell," rule from next year. The policy is not to publicly discriminate against homosexuals and at the same time, bind gay service members not to publicize their sexuality. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed his personal support, citing the "contradiction between allowing homosexuals to serve and requiring them to keep quiet about their sexuality." However, Korean military officials have been rather ignorant about the issue. Jeong Yol, one of the handful who came out of the closet, said he was tormented by the military which has defined homosexuality as a mental disease. "I was sent to a hospital where people beat me, mocked me and ordered me to harass a man," he recalled. "Even after I was sent back to the camp, I was branded as one to be 'watched out for' where people monitored my every move. Not many were willing to be a true friend. My life there was miserable and lonely," he said. Still, there are people who worry that the possible "loosen up" atmosphere on sexuality could lead to chaos in the barracks. Han Gi-heung, a journalist for Donga Ilbo newspaper, previously said, "The government is becoming 'populist' stressing human rights. But we must think about whether it will really benefit the military. The affairs and all other matters involving homosexual relations could easily tear down the structure." There have been several unsuccessful attempts to overcome such obstacles here. In 2006, gay riot police officer YuJung Min-seok refused to return to his post after a month of holiday, claiming that the masculine and oppressive military culture was offensive to him. In 2008, another riot policeman Lee Gye-deok requested the Ministry of National Defense to remove him from the riot police squad because the "heterosexual-dominant culture has constantly suppressed gay staff members." 병영에서 동성애 수용 가능할까? 남성 동성애자 병사들도 이성애자들과 똑같은 권리를 가져야 할까요? 헌법재판소는 동성애자 병사들에게 벌을 주게 되어 있는 병역법 92조가 헌법적 권리를 침해했는지 여부를 곧 결정하게 될 것 같다. 관련 심문이 금주 헌재에서 갖게 될 예정이다. 한국에서는 군이 가장 보수적이고 배타적인 조직 중 하나라서 이 문제에 관한 반응은 엇갈리고 있다. 변화가 있다면 많은 동성애자들이 극도의 편견과 차별을 당하고 있는 한국 사회 전반에 많은 영향을 끼칠 것이다. 남자 동성애자들과 시민 단체들은 성욕은 실행과는 무관하다며 이 법을 폐기할 것을 촉구하고 있는 반면 보수주의자들은 동성 성관계를 허용하면 갈등을 조장하여 전반적으로 군기가 약화될 거라며 우려하고 있다. 많은 사람들이 놀랍게도 이 청원은 2008년 군법회의가 제기했다. 군법은 개인의 성적인 선호의 결정권과 사생활을 침해하는 것이라고 주장했다.

Hmmm...

GAYS IN THE MILITARY

Backlash: The Role of the Asian Financial Crisis in the Feminization of Korean Ideals of Male Beauty

Backlash: The Role of the Asian Financial Crisis in the Feminization of Korean Ideals of Male Beauty

Posted in East Asia, Korean Media, Korean Sexuality by James Turnbull on December 15, 2008

(  Source:  RaySoda )

It may be a little premature of me to announce the following news to readers, but then it did make my weekend, and for the sake of those of you who are unwise enough to read this blog at work then perhaps I should use the opportunity to push the rather explicit advertisement in the previous post down “below the page” sooner rather than later.

But seriously though, I am inordinately happy to announce that alongside fellow panelists and bloggers Roger Wellor, Gomushin Girl and Liminality I’ll be presenting my paper entitled “Backlash: The Role of the Asian Financial Crisis in the Feminization of Korean Ideals of Male Beauty” at the sixth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) conference at Chungnam National University in Daejeon in August next year, and I’d be very happy to meet any readers while I’m there. I understand if you won’t be penciling anything in your 2009 diaries quite yet though, and so I’ll make sure to remind everyone again somewhat closer to the date.

( Source )

In the meantime, you may be interested in the abstract I wrote for it, which I plan to be the midst of expanding into a Master’s thesis by this time next year. While (naturally) rather academic-sounding, for readers unfamiliar with this post that ultimately led to it then it will probably be easier than reading than the 5100 words that I originally wrote on it there:

In the mid-1990s, the dominant images of men in Korean popular culture were of strong, masculine figures that protected and provided for women, mirroring the male breadwinner ethos that underlay Korea’s then prevalent salaryman system and which, by dint of being much larger and more integral to the Korean economy than the Japanese one with which it is most often associated, had a correspondingly larger hold on the Korean psyche. Despite this, in accounting for the complete switch of dominant images of men to effeminate, youthful “kkotminam” in just a few short years after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, what limited literature exists on evolving Korean sexuality and gender roles in the last decade seems to exhibit a curious blind spot as to possible economic and employment-related factors, instead attributing it to, variously, a rising general “pan-Asian soft masculinity”, the import of Western notions of metrosexuality, and particularly of Japanese ones of “bishōnen”.
In this paper, I begin by acknowledging the validity of these factors but argue that the dominance of Japan in East Asian cultural studies has led scholars to overemphasize the latter, in turn ascribing too much agency to Korean women in their late-teens and early-twenties that were the primary recipients of such Japanese cultural products as “yaoi” fan-fiction. This is anachronistic, as public displays and discussions of female sexuality and ideals of male beauty were in reality very much proscribed in Korea for unmarried women before the 2002 World Cup, the locus of which was primarily married women instead. Indeed, as I will next discuss, in the mid-1990s there was an sudden and intense public discourse on both generated by increasingly radical depictions of married women’s sex lives in books and films, partially reflecting the coming of the age of the first generation of Korean women to receive democratic notions of gender and family life through their schooling but then encountering the reality of Korean patriarchy in their marriages, and partially also the concomitant liberation represented by increased numbers of Korean women entering the workforce: small, but growing, and symbolically significant in that they vindicated decades of the relegation of feminist concerns to the wider aims of the democratization movement as a whole, with the understanding that they would be addressed upon its success.

It is in these contexts that the Asian Financial Crisis struck Korea, and married women in particular would be the first to be laid-off as part of restructuring efforts, with the explicit justification that they would be supported by their husbands. Rather than retaining and reaffirming breadwinner ideals of male beauty as encouraged however, in the final part of this paper I demonstrate how images of men in Korean popular culture were suddenly dominated by kkotminam and such indirect criticisms of salarymen as were permitted under prevailing public opinion. This was a natural reaction to circumstances, and I conclude that explanations for the shift that do not consequently take the role of the crisis as a catalyst into account are inadequate.

In hindsight, my overall argument about the increasing popularity of feminine ideals of Korean male beauty – that it at least partially stemmed from a sense of backlash and anger by Korean married women at their mass lay-offs and so forth – could possibly have been made a little clearer in that last paragraph, but then I was only just shy of the 500 word limit, and I’m not sure that I could have fitted everything necessary in otherwise. But it did the job, and so naturally I plan to write a great deal about the subject here as I work up to my thesis proposal and the conference paper (the feedback would be very helpful, and much appreciated), beginning by belatedly finishing my original  series on it hopefully sometime soon. Apologies for the very long delay to that, and to my one on the relationship between Korean militarism and gender relations also, but the former has evolved a great deal as you’ve seen, and the latter…well, I’ll explain (and hope to compensate for) the delay when I restart that also, hopefully before the end of the month.

Male Beauty Products a Booming Business in Korea

Male Beauty Products a Booming Business Actor Cho In-seong, modeling for men's toiletry brand Miraepa.  More and more Korean men are willing to do everything they can to make themselves look good. This trend has prompted the fashion and beauty industry to focus on the emerging men's grooming market, as the women's beauty market has reached saturation point. Beauty product makers have recently released a number of shampoos for men. Elastine has introduced Elastine Homme, a scalp-care product exclusively for men, and CJ has released CJ Lion shampoo, also formulated for men. Even men's hair styling devices are appearing. Unix's X1 Sports Style and World Electronics' CNS men's hair styling kits are designed to help men with short hair to easily style their looks. Body-shaping underwear is no longer considered just for women. Body Shapers has begun marketing Nipper for men, which makes the belly and waist look slimmer. In the men's body care product department, L'Oreal's Biotherm Homme has released Abdosculpt body gel and slimming patch. "We released them last year, and have received a good response from male consumers," Biotherm Homme said. The Face, Korea's no. 3 cosmetics company, last year saw men's products account for over 10 percent of its total sales. The proportion of male shoppers in online shopping malls has gradually increased to more than 30 percent. "As looks are being considered an element of competitiveness in society, basic cosmetics like whitening and anti-aging items are getting more popular among men. Some men who like to style themselves even use light make-up products," an industry insider said. englishnews@chosun.com / Mar. 12, 2008 08:48 KST
Copyright ⓒ 2009 Chosun.com All rights reserved.

 Original article available here:  http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2008/03/12/2008031261015.html

These are men?

"Yes, he is absolutely 150% pure testosterone!"

"Yes, he is VERY sure he's a man!"

"You mean to say you haven't seen other men do this?  It's natural!  All real men do this!"

"He's a REAL man, so after this facial, he will have his nails done."

 

 

"Yes, he has a girlfriend who is completely in love with this masculinity!"
 

"He's starting to look like his girlfriend!  

It must be love!"
 

"Don't be silly!  This is not his girlfriend (from above picture).  This is another REAL MAN!"
 

"Oh my ... what a really HOT, REAL MAN!
(He IS a man, right? Is he or isn't she?)"
 

"WOW!  So macho!"
 

"Yes, he is ooooozing with masculinity!"
 

"Like father, like daughter SON!"
 

"Yes, he has 5 girlfriends..."

"Pssst!  The WOMAN is on the LEFT!"
 

"

Yes, both these chaps are REAL MEN!"