Cosmetic dermatologist David Kim considers himself a skin-minimalist — someone who prioritizes maintenance over maxxing.
“I don’t do a million things or change the shape of your face or make you look like a different person,” says the board-certified doctor, who opened his first solo clinic, SoHo Derm, in New York this past February. “I try to preserve your features as much as possible, while trying to tweak and highlight certain features that make you truly special and help you age gracefully.”
His approach, like so much of beauty today, was first developed in South Korea, the new cosmetic capital of the world. “In Korea, a lot of times, people are not going to dermatologists to necessarily change the shape of their face or have stronger cheekbones, jawline or lips,” he says. “It’s all about consistency and having a plan so that you can look your absolute best without changing the way you look.”
David Kim
Though Kim wasn’t born in Korea, he spent the first 14 years of his life living there. Growing up, he was taught to maintain a simple skin care regimen: cleanser, moisturizer and SPF. “I would also do sheet masks with my entire family once a week, and go to bathhouses. That was just kind of in our culture. That’s what we grew up doing,” he recalls. “I think there’s a sense of maintenance and self care that’s ingrained into the culture so that you’re not doing it for any special occasions or for any specific reason, but it’s just in your routine.”
Having been exposed to such practices at a young age, you’d think Kim’s path to cosmetics was predetermined. But the truth is, he was on track to specialize in infectious disease as an undergraduate at Duke University. It wasn’t until medical school that he pivoted.
“I met some incredible mentors along the way, and they kind of guided me through the process and said you should look into this specialty, because dermatology is so multifaceted,” Kim says. “But even then, I didn’t think that I was going to go into cosmetics until I started doing more procedures during residency on injectables and lasers, and I really enjoyed it.”
Inside Dr. Kim’s new clinic.
Courtesy
In 2019, after completing his residency in California and moving to New York for a fellowship, he began shadowing dermatologists in Korea. “There was a whole wave of treatments from Korea that was making a huge impact on social media, and in medicine in general, and I wanted to be at the forefront of that.”
Today, Kim offers a menu of services straight from Seoul, including Rejuran, Skin Botox, Potenza and Xerf. “Usually what happens is, I hear about it from my colleagues back home, and then I make a mental note and follow it carefully, and eventually they’ll get FDA approved in the U.S., and that’s when I bring it to the office,” he says. The most in-demand treatment, however, has not yet received clearance, though he still offers a form of it.
“Rejuran is not FDA approved as an injectable, but approved to be used as a topical,” Kim says of the PDRN product designed to promote skin regeneration and stimulate collagen production. “You can do it in combination with microneedling or laser and apply it topically afterwards. It’s not as effective as injecting it directly under the skin, but you can still get the benefits of the salmon sperm afterwards.”
Dr. Kim performs Xerf on a client.
At SoHo Derm, Rejuran is administered using Potenza, a radiofrequency microneedling device with a fusion tip that absorbs topical products better by 67 to 70 percent.
Opposite to Rejuran is Xerf, the latest treatment to come from Korea. Similar to Ultherapy, Xerf stimulates collagen production and minimizes skin laxity, but with minimal downtime and little to no pain. The results, Kim says, are instant, and the maintenance is light. Clients with less skin laxity, ages 30 or younger, are recommended for two of the radiofrequency treatments per year, each three to four months apart, while those with “heavy jaws and a lot of skin laxity” are typically told to wait one month in between appointments.
The upkeep for Skin Botox, on the other hand, is more demanding — it’s recommended every four to five months. “Usually, Botox is injected in certain areas to soften the muscles, but you can dilute the Botox in a certain way and inject it all over the face to shake your pores and give you a nice glow and improve redness, and that’s Skin Botox,” Kim explains.
“The one thing that we don’t have in the U.S. is injectables that improve skin quality,” he continues. “There are things like Rejuran and so many other injectables in the world, in Europe and Asia, where you can inject to improve skin quality, not necessarily to change and sculpt your face.”
Korea, Kim believes, will continue to double down on this in the year ahead. “They are very focused on non-invasive treatments, and it’s all about lifting things and treatments that have minimal downtime, minimal pain, that will give you immediate results. So they’re going to continue to lift and keep everything more heart-shaped with energy-based devices and improve skin quality with all the injectables that they can do to keep your skin looking young and rejuvenated,” he says.
On top of that, Kim says body contouring is coming. Currently, a new “three-in-one” technology called Onda is being tested to target localized adiposity, cellulite and skin laxity. Surprisingly, it’s manufactured by an Italian company. “Not everything is K-beauty,” Kim notes.
