KSECRET Seoul 1988 Retinal Black Ginseng Serum

What is this product?

KSECRET's Seoul 1988 Retinal Black Ginseng Serum is worth a look if you want a retinoid at a genuinely gentle strength, and the wrong buy if you want a strong one: the 30ml formula discloses retinal at 200 ppm, which is 0.02 percent, at the low end of where retinal is normally studied. Anyone pregnant or planning to be should skip it, because retinal is a retinoid. It is registered in Korea as a dual-function whitening and wrinkle-improvement cosmetic, and both notified actives that answer for that are present, niacinamide sixth and adenosine twenty-first of 41 ingredients. Nothing in those 41 is a fragrance, a declared allergen or a drying alcohol.

What makes it different?

Two things set it apart. It publishes actual amounts where most retinal serums publish none: retinal at 200 ppm and black ginseng extract at 6,329.8 ppm, though both figures come off the Olive Young listing rather than the brand's own page, whose statutory ingredient row prints the same 41 entries without either number. The second is that it stacks four more tone and ageing actives behind the retinal instead of relying on it alone: niacinamide, adenosine, 3-O-ethyl ascorbic acid and bakuchiol, plus three peptides closing the list. Bakuchiol is often sold as the retinol alternative for people avoiding retinoids, so its presence here does not make the serum retinoid-free.

What is in it?

The full ingredient list as the brand publishes it, in the printed order. Each name links to what we know about that ingredient.

This brand publishes its ingredient list in Korean only. Names below are the matching INCI names from the Korean Cosmetic Association ingredient dictionary.

Key ingredient

• Water
• Glycerin
• Dipropylene Glycol
• Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride
• 1,2-Hexanediol
• Niacinamide
• Butylene Glycol
• Methyl Gluceth-20
• Polyglyceryl-3 Methylglucose Distearate
• Panax Ginseng Root Extract
• Hydrogenated Lecithin
• Sorbitan Stearate
• Ammonium Acryloyldimethyltaurate/VP Copolymer
• Macadamia Ternifolia Seed Oil
• Carbomer
• Tromethamine
• Betaine
• Tocopherol
• Ethylhexylglycerin
• Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil
• Adenosine
• Disodium EDTA
• Cholesterol
• Polyglyceryl-10 Oleate
• Brassica Campestris (Rapeseed) Sterols
• Phytosteryl/Behenyl/Octyldodecyl Lauroyl Glutamate
• Retinal
• Silica
• Aluminum/Magnesium Hydroxide Stearate
• Potassium Cetyl Phosphate
• Pentaerythrityl Tetra-di-t-butyl Hydroxyhydrocinnamate
• Arctium Lappa Root Extract
• Cnidium Officinale Root Extract
• Dioscorea Japonica Root Extract
• Paeonia Suffruticosa Root Extract
• Rehmannia Chinensis Root Extract
• 3-O-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid
• Bakuchiol
• sh-Oligopeptide-1
• sh-Oligopeptide-2
• sh-Polypeptide-1

Ingredients with no mark are ones we found nothing notable about, and when marks overlap on one ingredient we show the caution first.

We could not place these in the list above: 카프릴릭/카프릭트라이글리세라이드, 폴리글리세릴-3메틸글루코오스다이스테아레이트, 하이드로제네이티드레시틴, 솔비탄스테아레이트, 마카다미아씨오일, 해바라기씨오일, 폴리글리세릴-10올리에이트, 피토스테릴/베헤닐/옥틸도데실라우로일글루타메이트, 레틴알

Did the ad claims hold up?

We checked 2 lines this product advertises against the ingredient list and public documents. One of them holds up. The rest are only partly right or have nothing behind them.

Claims translated from Korean, originals preserved.

Each line is quoted as the brand published it, and each one was read on its own against the ingredient list and the documents the brand publishes.

How we read these lines