If you follow K-beauty you've seen the Mediheal Madecassoside Moisture Sun Serum SPF50+ PA++++ — a "sun serum" that's currently the #1 sunscreen at Olive Young, Korea's biggest beauty retailer. It had 17,189 reviews and a 4.9 average on Olive Young's Korean site when I collected the data.
Western reviews of Korean sunscreens are written by people who paid $25 on Amazon. Korean reviews are written by people who picked up a discounted bundle at the store down the street and are on their fifth tube. I wanted the second group's opinion.
So I pulled the 500 most recent reviews from Olive Young — with star rating, repurchase flag, photo flag, and the reviewer's self-reported skin type, skin tone and skin concerns — and read them.
The pace alone is a data point
The 500 newest reviews were all posted between September 5 and September 7, 2026. That's roughly 165 reviews per day for one sunscreen, in early September. Korean sunscreen season doesn't end in August.
Ratings: 92% five stars
| Stars | Reviews | Share |
|---|---|---|
| ★★★★★ | 460 | 92.0% |
| ★★★★ | 27 | 5.4% |
| ★★★ | 8 | 1.6% |
| ★★ | 1 | 0.2% |
| ★ | 4 | 0.8% |
- 31.4% are marked as repurchases. Olive Young verifies this from order history, so that's nearly a third of recent reviewers buying it again.
- 32% include photos.
- 8.4% are "one-month-use" reviews (written after 30+ days of use — Olive Young tags these separately).
Who is buying it (self-reported skin profile)
Of reviewers who disclosed a skin type: combination 21, dry 18, oily 13, sensitive 6, acne-prone 2, normal 1. So it's not a "dry skin only" product — combination and oily users are a majority.
Skin tones skew cool: summer cool 17, cool 12, spring warm 9, warm 9, autumn warm 8, winter cool 5.
Top skin concerns among reviewers: dark spots (28), brightening (19), breakouts (15), flakiness (11), wrinkles (10). This tracks — "madecassoside" and "trace repair" (흔적 리페어) in the name are aimed at post-acne marks, and buyers are self-selecting for it.
What the reviews actually talk about
I counted how many of the 500 reviews mention each theme (Korean keywords, translated):
| Theme | Reviews mentioning it | What they say |
|---|---|---|
| "Hydrating / moist" (촉촉) | 213 (43%) | The single most common word. Reviewers describe it as a moisturizer that happens to be SPF 50. |
| "Sticky" (끈적) | 105 (21%) | Almost always in the negative: "not sticky". This is the #1 fear with Korean sunscreens and this one passes. |
| "Makeup / base" (화장) | 101 (20%) | Used as a makeup base; the recurring claim is that foundation doesn't pill or slide over it. |
| "Moisture" (수분) | 100 (20%) | |
| "White cast" (백탁) | 80 (16%) | Overwhelmingly "no white cast". A handful of dissenters. |
| "Absorbs" (흡수) | 67 (13%) | Fast absorption. |
| "Stuffy / heavy" (답답) | 51 (10%) | Again mostly "not stuffy" — the sunscreen-that-doesn't-feel-like-sunscreen theme. |
| "Irritation" (자극) | 50 (10%) | Mostly "no irritation", including on sensitive skin. |
| "Light" (가벼) | 43 (9%) | |
| "Summer" (여름) | 33 (7%) | |
| "Pilling" (밀림) | 30 (6%) | Mixed — a few mention pilling under makeup. |
| "Eye stinging" (눈시림) | 29 (6%) | The most common actual complaint — but many say it doesn't sting, which for Korean users is a selling point. |
| "Trace / marks" (흔적) | 22 (4%) | People buying it for post-acne marks, per the name. |
The negative themes to watch if you sell this: eye stinging (a minority but real) and pilling under heavy makeup.
In their words (translated)
"It's a sunscreen but feels like a serum, so I keep reaching for it. I didn't even realize it was sunscreen at first — the texture is thin and soft, and it stays moist." — ★5, repurchase
"I have dry skin and most sunscreens make my face feel tight by afternoon. This one has real hydration, so I use it as my daily sun serum." — ★5, dry skin
"Almost no white cast, glides on soft and moist. I hate sunscreens that turn me white; this one just absorbs naturally. Not too sticky either. My daily sunscreen now." — ★5, repurchase
"Sunscreen always felt stuffy so I avoided it. This one goes on like a hydrating serum, light. I can use it every morning without dreading it." — ★5
"Doesn't pill or feel thick under makeup, and it preps the skin so base goes on smoothly." — ★5, repurchase
"It's really easy to control how much comes out — it doesn't gush, and you need very little. A small amount covers the whole face, and it's not heavy, so it was genuinely useful all summer." — ★5, repurchase
What this means if you're outside Korea
- This is a "sunscreen for people who hate sunscreen." Every dominant theme is the absence of a sunscreen negative — not sticky, not heavy, no white cast, no stuffiness. That's the pitch Korean users respond to, and it's the pitch that works abroad.
- Repurchase is the metric that matters. 31% repurchase in the newest 500 is unusually high for a sunscreen; hype products get five-star first reviews, staples get repurchases.
- Combination/oily buyers are the majority, despite "moisture" in the name. Don't position it as dry-skin-only.
- The bundle is the product. 85% of reviewers bought a bundle — 48% the 50+50+15 g set and 36% the 50+50 g double pack — and only 13% the single tube. Olive Young's "기획" (bundle promotion) is where the volume is.
Methodology
500 most recent reviews of goods no. A000000232672 on oliveyoung.co.kr, collected 2026-09-07 with the review API's own fields (star rating, repurchase flag, one-month-use flag, photo flag, reviewer skin type/tone/concern codes). Skin profile is self-reported and optional, so counts don't sum to 500. Theme counts are keyword matches on the Korean text; translations are mine.
I collected the reviews with a scraper I built and published on Apify: Olive Young Reviews Scraper. It returns the same fields for any Olive Young product — star rating, verified repurchase flag, photos, and the reviewer's skin type / tone / concerns already translated to English — so you can run this exact analysis on your own product or a competitor's. Apify's free plan covers roughly 1,600 reviews a month.
To find product numbers by keyword or brand, I use the companion Olive Young Scraper; there's a step-by-step walkthrough in my earlier post, How to get Olive Young and Daiso Korea product data as JSON.
If there's a K-beauty product you'd like me to run this on next, tell me in the comments.
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