‘We don’t do this hair’: The growing demand for Afro-textured hair care and salons in Korea
Senegalese model Brigitte Ciss / Courtesy of EGOTTON
The first time Senegalese model Brigitte Ciss walked into a salon in central Seoul’s multicultural Itaewon neighborhood, she was told, “We don’t do this hair.”
“It turned me off mainstream salons for good,” she told The Korea Times.
Since then, she has built her own patchwork of stylists: a Korean-run Black hair salon in Itaewon for braids and silk presses, an African stylist for sew-ins and other protective styles and sometimes wigs sent by her sister.
For day-to-day life, she toggles between what clients want on shoots and what feels comfortable in public.
Similarly to Korea, she describes her home country, Senegal, as a place that took a very long time to accept natural hair, adding that her parents still make comments when she wears her natural curls out. “Living in France and the United States actually made it easier to wear my natural hair,” Brigitte said.
As a model with five years of experience in Korea, Brigitte is happy to match whatever look a client wants. But, once the cameras are off, she wears her natural hair out because, as she puts it, “as a foreigner, even my skin is a conversation, so hair would just be another thing locals view as ‘different.’”
Brigitte makes it clear she is not seeking validation from Korean society for how she wears her hair. Instead, her focus is on standards within the modeling industry. Even when stylists on set get it wrong, she has to fight to be heard. “I wish the stylists would listen when we tell them that certain products or techniques simply will not work,” she said. “They usually do, but only after a long discussion and us having to show them.”
‘Nobody could do Black hair’
When looking around Korea for someone who understands curls, chances are high that people will end up in Itaewon and sooner or later, hear about Miss Mimi.
Miss Mimi sits inside her salon Family Hair Shop, which has catered to Black and curly hair for decades in central Seoul's Itaewon neighborhood, Jan. 6. Courtesy of Stephanie Scott
“I started working on the U.S. Army base around 1988,” she recalled, sitting in her salon Family Hair Shop in the backstreets of Itaewon. “Inside the Dragon Hill Lodge hotel, almost nobody could do Black hair. Maybe one person. So, I learned from her.”
Back then, soldiers and their families kept her chairs full. She stayed on base for more than a decade before she opened her first shop across from a McDonald’s in Itaewon, hiring six or seven staff to deal with the rush of mostly American clients.
As the neighborhood changed into a more diverse foreign district and African braiders arrived offering cheaper services, business shifted again. “Now I work by myself,” she said. “But still, maybe 80 to 90 percent of my customers are Black people.”
Korean perm solutions and styling products are largely formulated for straight hair, Miss Mimi explains, and do not work on tightly coiled textures. With so few Black residents, manufacturers see little profit in developing alternative products for textured hair.
To keep her clients’ curls intact, she imports specialist products from overseas, but the cost is high. A curl solution now sets her back roughly 70,000 won ($48.40) but once cost less than 10,000 won. “It’s a shock,” she said, adding that a single treatment can require several different products.
“COVID-19 made me stand by myself,” she said, recalling months when almost nobody came, followed by a slow return driven by social media. “Everybody comes to see me on Instagram and TikTok now. I know nobody can do what I do. This is my power.”
Data from the Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS) shows an increase of registered foreign residents from 2010 to 2024, and by the end of 2025, immigration data from the Ministry of Justice suggests more than 2.8 million foreign nationals were living in Korea, making up more than 5 percent of the population.
Black and other ethnic minority residents are part of that growth, a historic record that underlines how quickly Korea is changing, becoming what officials frame as the start of a “more multicultural Korea.” However, people in Seoul and elsewhere in the country with Afro-textured hair still cannot walk into most salons and expect basic hair care.
DIY
An online survey of 54 members of Facebook groups for Korea-based expats, Black communities and natural hair forums revealed that 51.9 percent of respondents said they now do “a lot more” of their own hair, and another 25.9 percent do “a little more,” suggesting that a lack of salons that understand textured hair is pushing many foreigners in Korea style their natural hair with DIY braids, twist-outs and cuts.
“I’m not someone who goes to a salon often because I don’t think our hair is that high maintenance,” said Jay, a Black British expat living in Korea. “I think we can do our hair ourselves.”
Living in Seoul nudged her into a low-product, low-manipulation routine and a focus on understanding her own hair porosity. “I just thought, there has to be a way I can take care of my hair with fewer products,” she said. “Hair is just hair; you need to give it the right TLC.”
She rarely wears her hair in a full afro in public because of the attention it brings, instead choosing straight-pressed hair or a sleek wig. “It makes me assimilate. I just use it to blend in a little bit, because this is what they’re used to,” she said. “Korean culture is literally defined by not standing out. You already stand out as being foreign, so you don’t need an extra thing.”
Before and after shots of Jay’s yearly keratin treatment in Seoul, where her Afro coils are smoothed into a sleek, straight style. A keratin treatment coats each strand with a protein formula, helping to reduce frizz and make hair temporarily straighter. Courtesy of Jay
Finding information still happens more through people than platforms. Both Jay and Brigitte name Facebook groups like Black Women in Korea or expat women’s forums as key spaces for crowdsourcing salon names, swapping products and asking strangers where they found edge control last week. Offline, people scan the subway for twist-outs and micro-locs, then ask who did their hair. “It’s word of mouth and meeting people,” Jay said.
A breakthrough in online hair care
Ebony Beauté is a growing online beauty shop built for people in Korea who still struggle to find suitable hair and skin care products. Behind it is Yana Delho, a French entrepreneur originally from Congo who moved to Seoul with to build her business.
In 2022, she conducted a small market study with the French-Korean Chamber of Commerce. The research confirmed that a few Black-focused beauty shops already exist. “I want to give credit to the women who are already doing a great job in this field,” she added, but it also revealed that it remained a niche market with strong demand and space for newcomers.
Yana wears locs and has always kept a natural hair care routine using products like raw shea butter, plant oils and black soap —all part of the product list she now sells on Ebony Beauté’s website. She stocks natural butters and oils because they were exactly what she could not find when she arrived.
Yana Delho runs an Ebony Beauté pop‑up stall at a holiday community market in central Seoul's Itaewon, Nov. 29, 2025. Courtesy of Yana Delho
Most of her customers are Black Americans and Black Africans, and while many gravitate toward the same brands, she has learned that their routines and expectations can vary. This has led her to focus on product research and pay close attention to customer demands. She also takes pride in the natural origin of her raw ingredients, sourced directly from across Africa.
The messages that land most often in her inbox are that certain popular hair extension styles are still hard to source in Korea.
Another is makeup. “Many customers struggle to find foundation shades and makeup products that truly match deeper complexions,” she said. The problem, in other words, is not only about hair — it is about who beauty shelves are built around.
The most challenging aspect of her work is regulatory compliance. Korea, like other major cosmetics hubs, protects its market with strict rules. Importing lotions and creams involves navigating complex processes that many small foreign manufacturers are simply not set up to handle. One demand that is particularly hard to meet is that retailers are expected to provide full ingredient lists with exact percentages for every imported product. “For many brands, those formulas are trade secrets. Sharing them with a country known for its original equipment manufacturing feels risky,” she said.
Yana is a single mother of two young children, building a business in a country where she is still learning the language and systems. “Juggling life as a foreigner, an entrepreneur and a single parent is emotionally demanding on a daily basis,” she said. Yet those pressures have bolstered her sense of purpose.
“At the end of the day, business follows profitability,” she said. K-beauty is “designed by Koreans, for Koreans.”
She does not expect big brands to pivot dramatically towards Black consumers anytime soon. “My focus is not on changing K-beauty but on ensuring that Korea provides space, visibility and fair conditions for businesses that serve different communities and needs,” she said.
She hopes Ebony Beauté will become as easy to find as any mainstream K-beauty brand, not only in Itaewon and Pyeongtaek but in tourist areas and local shopping streets nationwide. In the long term, she wants Black, mixed-race and dark-skinned customers in Asia to be able to walk into a nearby shop or visit a local website and find suitable products, without repeatedly sending their money and trust abroad.
Stephanie Scott is a Seoul-based journalist and video producer focusing on culture, fashion and lifestyle content. She previously worked in TV production in the U.K. on projects for major broadcasters and streaming brands.