Launched in 2013, HwaHae is a Korean beauty app that boasts hundreds of thousands of cosmetics reviews and ingredient analyses. It’s an independent third party source of information on cosmetics that enables beauty lovers to find their perfect match.

The name “Hwahae” (화해) is short for “화장품을 해석하다”, which literally means “to analyse cosmetics”. Millions of Koreans use Hwahae to search for information on beauty products’ ingredients and see how safe they are for the skin.

Hwahae has become a must-visit destination for beauty lovers with sensitive skin, eczema and hair loss. The app produces weekly rankings for products and features the hottest trending products by users for each category. The app promotes smart buying, not only in terms of budget and cost, but also by enabling users to tailor their skincare routines to take into account their own skin types.

It uses a scale to help users choose the best products for them based on:

Blue (rating 1-3): products needing the least concern / caution, namely those that contain the most common ingredients that are generally okay to use on all skin types;

Yellow (rating 4-7): products needing mild or medium concern / caution, with ingredients that may be harmful to certain skin types or in high concentrations;

Red (rating 8 and above): products needing high or heavy concern / caution, with high concentrations of ingredients that should be avoided because of their potential to harm skin.

Now, take these ratings with a huge grain of salt because they aren't particularly scientific or evidence based. Unfortunately, they buy into a lot of clean beauty fallacies that have more to do with categorizing ingredients and fear mongering rather than looking at the formulation of a skin care product as a whole. Case in point retinol, which receives a "red grade" rating, but is actually an excellent ingredient that has the ability to transform your skin. 

The app focuses mostly on Korean skincare and cosmetic, meaning Korean manufacturers also keep a close eye on it. Not only do they use positive reviews to promote their products, manufacturers also use negative reviews as a learning experience.

As a result of negative reviews on Hwahae, AmorePacific and LG Household and Health Care (two of the biggest names in K-Beauty globally) made an effort to downgrade the irritancy level of their products, particularly with the use of fragrances.

Korean consumers are particularly attuned to newer brands, and are conscious that brand value is no guarantee of quality. As a result, many new brands have managed to make a brand for themselves for releasing quality products that skip out on the harmful ingredients.

Now, the app is definitely not 100% free from bias. There are allegations that brands pay people to review products there as well and brands can also pay the app company for promoted rankings. 

However, there's no doubt that Hwahae does generally mention a lot of the products that are trending in Korea in real time and introduces plenty of indie beauty brands too.