{"id":203175,"date":"2026-04-20T11:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203175\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T11:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:25:09","slug":"dr-david-kim-brings-the-best-of-k-beauty-treatments-to-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203175\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. David Kim Brings the Best of K-Beauty Treatments to New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCosmetic dermatologist David Kim considers himself a skin-minimalist \u2014 someone who prioritizes maintenance over maxxing. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t do a million things or change the shape of your face or make you look like a different person,\u201d says the board-certified doctor, who opened his first solo clinic, SoHo Derm, in New York this past February. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis approach, like so much of beauty<\/a> today, was first developed in South Korea,<\/a> the new cosmetic capital of the world. \u201cIn\u00a0Korea, 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,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about consistency and having a plan so that you can look your absolute best without changing the way you look.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"David<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDavid Kim<\/p>\n

\n\tThough Kim wasn\u2019t 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<\/a> regimen: cleanser, moisturizer and SPF. \u201cI 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\u2019s what we grew up doing,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI think there\u2019s a sense of maintenance and\u00a0self care\u00a0that\u2019s ingrained into the culture so that you\u2019re not doing it for any special occasions or for any specific reason, but it\u2019s just in your routine.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHaving been exposed to such practices at a young age, you\u2019d think Kim\u2019s 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\u2019t until medical school that he pivoted.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI 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,\u201d Kim says. \u201cBut even then, I didn\u2019t 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Inside<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tInside Dr. Kim\u2019s new clinic. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2019, after completing his residency in California and moving to New York for a fellowship, he began shadowing dermatologists in Korea. \u201cThere\u00a0was 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tToday, Kim offers a menu of services straight from Seoul, including Rejuran, Skin Botox, Potenza and Xerf. \u201cUsually 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\u2019ll get FDA approved in the U.S., and that\u2019s when I bring it to the office,\u201d he says. The most in-demand treatment, however, has not yet received clearance, though he still offers a form of it. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRejuran is not FDA approved as an injectable, but approved to be used as a topical,\u201d Kim says of the PDRN product<\/a> designed to promote skin regeneration and stimulate collagen production. \u201cYou can do it in combination with microneedling or laser and apply it topically afterwards. It\u2019s not as effective as injecting it directly under the skin, but you can still get the benefits of the salmon sperm afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Dr.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDr. Kim performs Xerf on a client. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tOpposite to Rejuran is Xerf, the latest treatment to come from Korea. Similar to Ultherapy, Xerf stimulates collagen production and minimizes skin laxity, but with\u00a0minimal downtime\u00a0and\u00a0little to no\u00a0pain. The results, Kim says, are instant, and\u00a0the maintenance is light. Clients\u00a0with\u00a0less\u00a0skin laxity, ages 30 or younger,\u00a0are recommended for two of the radiofrequency treatments per year, each three to four months apart, while those with\u00a0\u201cheavy jaws and a lot of skin laxity\u201d are typically told to wait one month in between appointments.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe upkeep for Skin Botox, on the other hand, is more demanding \u2014 it\u2019s recommended every four to five months. \u201cUsually, 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\u2019s Skin Botox,\u201d Kim explains. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe\u00a0one thing that we\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0have in the U.S. is injectables that improve skin quality,\u201d he continues.\u00a0\u201cThere are things like\u00a0Rejuran\u00a0and 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKorea, Kim believes, will continue to double down on this in the year ahead. \u201cThey are very focused on non-invasive treatments, and it\u2019s all about lifting things and treatments that have minimal downtime, minimal pain, that will give you immediate results. So\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0going to continue to lift and keep everything more heart-shaped with\u00a0energy-based\u00a0devices and\u00a0improve skin quality with all the injectables that they can do to keep your skin looking young and rejuvenated,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn top of that, Kim says body contouring is coming. Currently, a new \u201cthree-in-one\u201d technology called Onda is being tested to target localized adiposity, cellulite and skin laxity. Surprisingly, it\u2019s manufactured by an Italian company. \u201cNot everything is K-beauty<\/a>,\u201d Kim notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cosmetic dermatologist David Kim considers himself a skin-minimalist \u2014 someone who prioritizes maintenance over maxxing. \u201cI don\u2019t do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7578,9,11,10,3743,9887,17603,80399],"class_list":{"0":"post-203175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-beauty","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-skincare","13":"tag-south-korea","14":"tag-wwd-weekend","15":"tag-wwd-weekend-beauty"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}