🧼 K-Beauty · Comparison

3 Korean cleansing balms: two of them are the same evening

Heads up: some links below are affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. I bought all three of these with my own money, in Korea, and read the concentrations off the boxes myself.

The three

Same size, same category, same step in the routine. In Korea the beplain costs about 30% more than either of the other two. Hold onto that number — it does something strange when the products cross the Pacific.

The thing I can tell you that a US review can't

In Korea, these three are not priced as equals. beplain is the expensive one. If you stand in an Olive Young and pick up all three, the milk balm asks you for ₩5,000 more than the wax balms, and you feel it.

In the US, that gap mostly disappears. Banila Co and Beauty of Joseon both land around $21 for 100 mL. beplain lands in the same neighbourhood, and at the time I'm writing this it's actually below both of them.

US prices move around, so check before you buy rather than trusting my number. But the ordering is the durable part, and it's inverted. That's not a deal I found. It's what happens when three products get exported by three companies with three different distribution setups.

Table A: what the labels say

Korean cosmetics law requires that when an ingredient appears in a product's name, its concentration is printed on the box. That's why I can give you these numbers and an English-language reviewer usually can't — they're on the Korean side of the packaging, in Korean.

The rice is printed to two decimal places, and it's mostly oil

Beauty of Joseon built an entire brand on rice. The balm carries "Radiance" in its name and lists rice three separate times on the box — and Korean law makes them print how much of each.

Rice bran oil at 100 ppm. Rice seed water at 0.97 ppm. Rice extract — the one that sounds most like skincare — at 0.29 ppm, which is roughly three parts in ten million.

Here's the fair reading, though. Rice bran oil is the one of the three that actually belongs in a balm: it's an oil, and a balm is an oily product. The two rice extracts are water-based, and a balm has almost no water in it for them to live in. So the ingredient that made it in at a meaningful ratio is the one that does a job, and the ones in the decimal places are there so the word "rice" can appear on the list.

Which gives you a clean instruction rather than a complaint: if you came for the rice, buy the toner or the serum, not the balm. Those are water-based, and water-based Korean products routinely carry double-digit percentages of the thing on the front. I found the same split with cleansing oils versus cleansing foams — the oils hold their hero ingredient in parts per million while the foams hold it in whole percents. A balm sits on the oil side of that line, and no brand can change that.

One more thing the label gives away: this isn't only a rice balm. There's oat and Job's tears extract in there too, plus sea buckthorn oil. The front says rice because rice is the brand.

The milk in "Milk Balm" isn't dairy

beplain's version is more interesting because the name is doing two jobs. Mung bean is there at 1,000 ppm — ten times the rice figure, still a tenth of a percent. But the "milk" isn't an ingredient level at all. There's a soy milk ferment on the list at 300 ppb, which is a thousandth of a ppm, so it isn't what's making anything milky.

The milk is the texture. The balm turns white and liquid on your skin and rinses like a cleansing milk. The name is describing what you'll see, not what's inside — which is more honest than it first looks, and worth knowing if you're avoiding dairy for any reason. There is none in here.

Only one of the three has fragrance

Banila Co lists Fragrance. The other two don't. If you're the kind of person whose face objects to scented cleansers, that single line is the entire decision, and it's the one clean separation between the two wax balms.

And one of them prints its own limit on the box

This is the part I didn't expect. On the English side of the Beauty of Joseon carton, under How to use, the brand writes that the balm is suitable for light makeup and recommends you use an appropriate product for waterproof or heavy makeup.

Neither of the other two says anything like this. Banila Co sells Clean It Zero as the thing that takes everything off; beplain's messaging goes further still and hints you might not need a second cleanse at all.

I'd rather reward that than punish it. A brand that prints its own ceiling is a brand telling you the truth before you're disappointed by it. And it hands you the decision rule for free: light makeup or sunscreen-only days, this is the cheaper of the two wax balms and it has no fragrance. Full face, waterproof mascara, long-wear tint — take the Banila Co, or take the beplain.

It also explains something I'd otherwise have had to guess at. I wear light makeup most days, which is exactly the condition the box describes, and that's very likely why the two wax balms felt identical to me. I can tell you what I found on my face. I can't tell you what happens on a face wearing more than mine, so I'm handing you the manufacturer's own answer instead of inventing one.

Table B: what I actually noticed

I want to be precise about what I'm claiming with the two wax balms. I'm not telling you they're the same formula — I haven't tested that and I can't. I'm telling you that across normal evenings, with normal makeup, I could not find a difference that would change which one I reached for. Same firmness, same melt time, same amount of rubbing, same need to wash again afterwards.

That's a genuinely useful result even though it sounds like a non-result. It means you don't have to agonise over these two. Buy on fragrance, price and whichever one is actually in stock, and you will not have made a mistake.

Except on one point, and the box says it out loud

There is one line where Beauty of Joseon draws a limit that Banila Co doesn't. It's printed in English on their own box: the balm suits light makeup, and for waterproof or heavy makeup they recommend you use a different product.

I take brands seriously when they say something that costs them a sale. My evenings are light-makeup evenings, which is why the two felt identical to me — I was never asking this balm to do the thing it says it isn't for.

So the split is sharper than "they're the same." For everyday makeup, pick either. For waterproof mascara, long-wear base or a full face, take the Clean It Zero — it holds up to heavy makeup and doesn't hedge about it. That's the clearest reason to choose between two balms that otherwise behave the same way.

The one that isn't like the others

beplain's balm doesn't wait for water. Scoop it, put it on dry skin, and hand temperature alone turns it liquid — it will run off your fingers if you're slow about it. The brand describes it as going milky on contact with skin. In my experience it melts further and faster than that suggests.

For contrast, here is the Beauty of Joseon after the same warmth and the same amount of working between my fingers.

Practically, that changes two things. Less rubbing, which matters if you have anything reactive going on. And a softer finish afterwards — where the wax balms leave my face feeling bare in a way that wants toner immediately, this one leaves it comfortable.

Whether that's an improvement depends on you. I actually prefer a squeaky finish, and I'd still buy this again. That's the strongest thing I can say about it: it won me over on a preference I didn't share.

One correction to the marketing, though — you still need a second cleanse. The brand suggests you might not. I washed after it every single time, and I'd tell you to as well. It's step one, not the whole routine. Here's what I use for step two.

What Korea actually buys

Here's a number that reframes all of this. On Korean retail, Clean It Zero has racked up nearly 25,000 reviews. The Beauty of Joseon balm has around a hundred.

That gap isn't about quality — I've just told you I couldn't separate them on my face. It's about what each brand is at home versus abroad. Clean It Zero is a Korean institution; it more or less invented this category for Korean shoppers and has been the default answer for over a decade. Beauty of Joseon is enormous in English-speaking countries and much quieter in Korea, and its balm is a side product rather than a flagship.

My verdicts

So which one

Where to buy