𫧠K-Beauty · Comparison
4 Korean cleansing foams, tested on the same hand
Heads up: some links below are affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission if you buy through them β at no extra cost to you. I bought three of these four in Korea with my own money. The fourth was a free sample tube that came inside another purchase, and I say so where it matters. Nothing here was gifted by a brand.
The short answer
The foamiest one removed the least makeup, and the gentlest formula left the most behind. Those two sentences are the whole page. If your skin is reactive, buy Beauty of Joseon Green Plum or Round Lab 1025. If you wear long-wear makeup and want your second cleanse to actually finish, buy BIOHEAL BOH. Lather is not cleaning power
What I did, and what it doesn't mean
Foam cleansers are second-step products. You lather them with water, after an oil or a balm has already taken your makeup off. That's how I use them every night and it's what I recommend.
This test wasn't that. I drew a lip tint swatch and a liquid eyeliner line on the back of my hand, then rubbed each cleanser straight onto it with almost no water β just what came out of the tube. Removing the water was the point: I wanted to see what the formula itself does to pigment. It's a measuring condition, not a routine. Please don't skip your first cleanse because a foam did well here.
I ran the lather test separately with plenty of water, since foam needs water to exist. So there are two results per product: how much came off, and how much foam it made.
Why bother? Every English review of these four says roughly the same thing β gentle, non-stripping, pleasant. None of them put the four on the same hand on the same night, and none of them read the Korean ingredient percentages. That gap is what this page is for.
Table A β what the labels say
| Product | Size | Per 10 ml | Scent | Amounts printed on the label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anua Heartleaf Quercetinol Pore Deep Cleansing Foam | 150 ml | β©900 | Tea-tree-ish | Heartleaf water 33% Heartleaf powder 3,000 ppm Quercetin 1 ppb |
| Beauty of Joseon Green Plum Refreshing Cleanser | 100 ml | β©1,300 | None | Green plum water 24.5% Mung bean seed extract 29.4% Plum extract 1.5 ppm |
| Round Lab 1025 Cleanser | 250 ml | β©636 | None | None printed |
| BIOHEAL BOH Panthecell Repair Cica Soothing Cleanser | 160 ml | β©938 | Minty | None printed |
Price per 10 ml is the number nobody publishes in English, and it's the one that changes what you buy. The spread here is more than double: β©636 against β©1,300. I've left the prices in won on purpose β exchange rates move and import markups vary wildly by retailer, so the ratio between these four is the honest part, not a dollar figure I'd have to guess at.
One of these I didn't buy
The Round Lab tube is 40 ml and printed not for sale on the back. It came free inside a cleansing oil purchase. The β©636 per 10 ml is the retail price of the full 250 ml tube, not anything I paid. In Korea the trial size usually arrives in the box with the full-size product, so you find out whether you like something before you commit to it. It's one of the genuinely good things about buying skincare here β and it's why my month with Round Lab was on a sample tube rather than a bottle I chose.
Table B β what actually happened
This is after rinsing, which is the only measurement that counts. Everything lifts something while you're rubbing it. The question is what's still on your skin when you dry your face.
| Product | After rinsing | Lather | Finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| BIOHEAL BOH | Cleanest of the four. Tint and eyeliner both gone | Thin | Slippery |
| Anua | Faint tint, and eyeliner traces still visible β the only one | Thin | Squeaky |
| Round Lab 1025 | Noticeable pink patches | Thin | Squeakiest |
| Beauty of Joseon | Most tint left behind | Far more than the rest | Slippery |
Read the lather column against the first column. The product that made dramatically more foam than the other three removed the least. The two that barely lathered at all took first and second on cleaning. Foam is a surfactant behaving in water. It isn't a measure of anything happening to your makeup.
Here are all four hands after rinsing, in the order they placed:
The one that surprised me
Anua's foam has physical scrub particles in it β heartleaf powder, printed on the label at 3,000 ppm. You can feel them. It's the only one of the four that gives you that grainy, doing-something sensation, and I went in expecting it to win.
It's the only one that left eyeliner behind.
Scrubbing loosens dead surface skin. Dissolving the binder that holds pigment on is a chemical job. They're not the same task, and a product can be very good at the first while doing little for the second. If you've been choosing cleansers by how much they feel like they're working, this is the photo to remember.
Now read the ingredient lists, and the ranking flips
I pulled the full Korean ingredient declaration for all four. The order comes out completely different.
| Product | Active or potentially irritating ingredients | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Round Lab 1025 | None. No fragrance, no acids, no enzymes, no grains | Gentlest |
| Beauty of Joseon | None. No fragrance, no acids, low pH | Gentlest |
| Anua | Salicylic acid, eucalyptus leaf oil, scrub particles | Active |
| BIOHEAL BOH | Salicylic acid, protease, marjoram leaf oil | Most active |
That's an exact inversion of the cleaning results. The best remover is the most active formula. The gentlest formula left the most makeup on my skin. Neither of those is a flaw β they're the same fact described from two directions.
Round Lab's list is the one that made me stop and read it twice. Mild surfactants throughout β sodium cocoyl isethionate, coco-betaine, taurate, glycinate. The only botanical oil is matricaria, which is chamomile. And then it puts ceramide NP, panthenol, allantoin, beta-glucan and seven amino acids into a product you rinse off thirty seconds later. Its caution panel runs two lines. Anua's runs to seven numbered items.
BIOHEAL BOH goes the other way, with over sixty ingredients including a protease β a protein-digesting enzyme, named in English on the tube. Salicylic acid plus an enzyme plus lipids is exactly the formula that would strip a tint swatch and leave your hand feeling slippery, which is precisely what happened.
To be fair to BIOHEAL: the tube says for thin & delicate skin, and the back confirms it passed a skin irritation test on sensitive skin. That's true and I'm not disputing it. But "designed for thin skin" doesn't mean "does nothing." They built an active cleanser and put ceramides, cholesterol and fourteen peptides alongside it to keep the barrier fed. It's a tested active product, not a mild one.
The number on the front isn't the number in the tube
Two of these four print ingredient amounts. Both do the same thing with them.
Beauty of Joseon's cleanser is named after green plum. Plum appears twice on the ingredient list. Green plum water at 24.5%. Plum extract at 1.5 ppm. Same fruit, same tube, roughly a hundred and sixty thousand times apart.
Anua's is named after quercetinol. Heartleaf water is 33% and sits ahead of purified water as the first ingredient. Quercetin is 1 ppb.
Neither is a lie. A water infusion and a concentrated extract are different raw materials and both belong on the list. But if you're buying the Anua for the heartleaf, that's a real purchase β a third of the tube. If you're buying it for the quercetinol on the front of the box, you're buying a rounding error. Same logic for the plum.
The other two, Round Lab and BIOHEAL, print no percentages at all. That's information too. It tells you which brands decided the number was worth putting on the box.
This is the same pattern I found in the five cleansing oils, where Anua's heartleaf comes in at 10 ppm in the oil and 33% in this foam. Oil bases can't carry water-soluble botanical infusions, so a hero ingredient collapses by four orders of magnitude between two products sold in the same box. If you want the heartleaf, the foam is where it lives.
Why Korea double cleanses, and it isn't tradition
English skincare content tends to file double cleansing under Korean habit, as though it were a cultural preference. It isn't. It's downstream of a different product.
Korean buyers overwhelmingly avoid the white cast that mineral sunscreens leave, so the sunscreens that sell here are the ones that go on clear. Those need a first-step oil or balm to come off properly β a foam alone won't do it. The routine follows the sunscreen, not the other way around.
If you've switched to a no-white-cast sunscreen, you've already inherited the reason. That's the honest version: it isn't about being thorough, or being Korean. It's about what you put on your face that morning.
So which one should you buy
BIOHEAL BOH Panthecell Repair Cica Soothing Cleanser β Bought again
Six months in, on my second tube, and the one I keep restocking. Best remover of the four by a clear margin: minty, low lather, slippery finish. Buy it if you wear long-wear makeup and want your second cleanse to genuinely finish the job. If your skin is reactive right now, or you're already using acids or retinoids at night, go with one of the two below instead β there's salicylic acid and an enzyme in here, and stacking is how people end up with a sore face.
Beauty of Joseon Green Plum Refreshing Cleanser β Will buy again
The gentlest list of the four, no fragrance, low pH, bouncy gel, and by far the most generous lather if that's something you enjoy. It left the most tint behind, which sounds damning until you remember this is a second-step product β behind an oil cleanse there's no tint left for it to remove. Buy it if your skin is easily irritated or you like a big foam. It's the priciest per millilitre at β©1,300 per 10 ml and the tube is only 100 ml, so budget for it.
Round Lab 1025 Cleanser β Will buy again
Cheapest per millilitre by a distance, and the cleanest ingredient list I read all week β a rinse-off product with ceramide, panthenol and seven amino acids in it. Unscented. It gave the squeakiest finish of the four, which some people love and some read as stripped; if you're in the second group, this is the one to pair with a richer moisturiser rather than the one to skip. My month with it was on the free 40 ml tube, so I haven't lived with a full-size bottle yet.
Anua Heartleaf Quercetinol Pore Deep Cleansing Foam β Buy it for a specific night
One month in, and I'd buy it again β for certain evenings rather than every evening. The scrub particles and the salicylic acid make this the one I reach for when my skin feels congested and rough, not the one for a calm night. It's registered in Korea as a functional product for acne-prone skin, which is a regulatory designation rather than marketing. The tea-tree note is pleasant and honestly part of why I trust it, even knowing the quercetin is 1 ppb. What it isn't is a makeup remover β if that's what you want from these four, BIOHEAL BOH did it better with no grains at all.
Before you order the BIOHEAL
The version widely sold in the US is a different product: the Panthecell Repair Cica Bubble Facial Cleanser. Different formula, different texture, different thing in the tube. If you want the one I tested, the front reads Panthecell Repair Cica Soothing Cleanser, 160 mL / 5.41 fl. oz. Check the words before you check out.
All four, on Amazon
Prime-filtered links, so you're not waiting three weeks on a shipment from Korea or paying customs at your own front door.
BIOHEAL BOH β Beauty of Joseon β Round Lab 1025 β Anua βThe one sentence to take away
Three rankings, three different orders. Cleaning: BIOHEAL, Anua, Round Lab, Beauty of Joseon. Gentleness: Round Lab and Beauty of Joseon tied at the top, then Anua, then BIOHEAL. Lather: Beauty of Joseon alone, then everything else.
The best remover and the gentlest formula sit at opposite ends of the same list, and the foamiest one removed the least. Pick the axis that matches your skin this month, not the one the packaging is shouting about.
Korean cleansing foam FAQ
Do I actually need to double cleanse?
If you wear a sunscreen that leaves no white cast, or long-wear makeup, then yes β a foam alone won't fully remove either. If you wear neither, a single foam cleanse is fine. The routine follows what you put on your face, not a rule.
Which Korean cleansing foam is best for sensitive skin?
Round Lab 1025 and the Beauty of Joseon Green Plum, going by the ingredient lists. Neither contains fragrance, acids, enzymes or scrub particles, and both include barrier ingredients. The Anua and the BIOHEAL BOH both contain salicylic acid.
Does more foam mean better cleaning?
No. In this test the product with by far the most lather left the most makeup behind, and the two thinnest-lathering products cleaned best. Foam is surfactant behaviour in water, not a measure of removal.
Is the US version of the BIOHEAL BOH cleanser the same?
No. The version widely listed in the US is the Panthecell Repair Cica Bubble Facial Cleanser, which is a different product. The one reviewed here is the Panthecell Repair Cica Soothing Cleanser, 160 ml.
Is Anua's cleansing foam an exfoliator?
Partly, yes. It contains salicylic acid and heartleaf powder scrub particles printed on the label at 3,000 ppm, and it's registered in Korea as a functional product for acne-prone skin. Treat it as a targeted product rather than a nightly cleanser.
Why is Round Lab 1025 so much cheaper?
Volume. The full-size tube is 250 ml against 100β160 ml for the others, which works out at β©636 per 10 ml versus β©1,300 for the Beauty of Joseon β more than double the difference.
What does ppm mean on a Korean skincare label?
Parts per million. 1,000 ppm is 0.1% of the formula. Parts per billion is a thousand times smaller again, so 10,000 ppb equals 10 ppm, or 0.001%. Korean labels often print these figures for the ingredient named on the front, which is how you can tell that Anua's quercetin at 1 ppb and its heartleaf water at 33% are not remotely the same kind of number.