Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light, though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they, do not go gentle into that good night.
CJ Olive Young attracts 100,000 visitors to inaugural US K-beauty festival in Los Angeles
The Olive Young Festa held in Los Angeles / Courtesy of CJ Olive Young
By Jhoo Dong-chan
CJ Olive Young, the retail chain behind Korea's largest health and beauty store network, said Tuesday that its first "Olive Young Festa" held in the United States drew 100,000 visitors over three days in Los Angeles.
The event ran Aug. 14-16 in Los Angeles, California, held alongside KCON LA 2026, a long-running Korean pop culture convention that has taken place annually since 2012.
Fifty-five Korean beauty and lifestyle brands set up booths across roughly 47,000 square feet of exhibition space, allowing local visitors to sample the latest Korean skin care trends firsthand.
The venue re-created the look of Seoul's trendiest shopping districts — Gangnam, Seongsu, Myeong-dong and Hongdae — complete with Korean-language street signs, bus stops and crosswalks, alongside recorded subway station announcements.
A central "Olive Young Store" section walked visitors through a Korean skin care routine in sequence, from double cleansing to serums and sun protection, while a personal color-matching service and a skin-diagnostic "SkinScan" booth drew long lines throughout the event.
CJ Olive Young said the festival, tied to a Korean government-backed retail overseas expansion program run with the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, was designed to help small and independent Korean beauty brands build direct relationships with American consumers.
All participating brands are already carried in Olive Young's U.S. stores.
Several attendees interviewed by the company said they had traveled hours to attend — one visitor drove three hours from San Diego, while another flew in from Alberta, Canada — many citing an interest in K-pop as their entry point into Korean beauty products.
Olive Young Festa launched in Korea in 2019 as an experiential beauty event connecting brands directly with shoppers. This year's Los Angeles stop marked the festival's first expansion abroad, part of a planned world tour to additional cities.
This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.