Billionaire Rides K-Beauty Boom That Began in Grandma’s Kitchen

Back in the 1930s, Yun Dok Jeong’s ability to provide for her six children came down to the camellia plant. To extract its prized oil—which fashionable Korean women used in their hair—Yun would spend hours pulverizing and pressing the flowers’ delicate seeds in the kitchen of her home in Gaeseong, a center of commerce—now part of North Korea—that was best known for merchants who pioneered the cultivation and trading of ginseng.

More than eight decades later, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its May 2015 issue, Yun’s grandson Suh Kyung Bae has turned those humble beginnings into one of Asia’s most powerful cosmetics empires. “The root of Amorepacific is my grandmother,” says Suh, seated in front of a replica of her original kitchen inside his company’s museum in Osan, South Korea. The aromas of camellia, ginseng, and other Asian plants greet visitors in the all-white showroom, part of the company’s sprawling 22-hectare (55-acre) campus, which includes a bustling factory churning out 15,000 metric tons of cosmetics a year, as well as an art museum and botanical garden. About 50 kilometers (30 miles) away, in central Seoul, construction crews are building a new $470 million headquarters designed by British architect David Chipperfield that’s scheduled to open in 2017.