Inside North America's First K-Beauty Aesthetic Summit: What Happened and What's Next

Dr. Roy Kim recaps the landmark K-Beauty Aesthetic Summit — North America's first conference dedicated entirely to K-Beauty innovation in aesthetics. From skin boosters and exosomes to PDRN, PDO threads, RF microneedling, and glass skin protocols, hear highlights from world-class faculty including Dr. Rod Rohrich, Dr. Kay Durairaj, and more. Whether you're a nurse practitioner, PA, dermatologist, or plastic surgeon, this episode breaks down the cutting-edge techniques and stacking protocols redefining modern skin health and regenerative aesthetics. Plus — should KBAS come back in 2027? Share your thoughts!

#KBeauty #KBeautyAestheticSummit #KBAS #TheBeautyStandard #DrRoyKim #PlasticSurgery #RegenerativeAesthetics #SkinBoosters #GlassSkin #Exosomes #PDRN #PDOThreads #RFMicroneedling #AestheticMedicine #SkinCare #MedSpa #KoreanBeauty #FacialPlasticSurgery #Dermatology #BeautyPodcast

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Transcript

KBAS_-_thank_you_audio_podcast

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Beauty Standard with Dr. Roy Kim. About a week ago in Koreatown, about a hundred nurse practitioners, PAs, plastic surgeons, facial plastic surgeons, dermatologists, and more came together for North America's first K-Beauty conference. We called it K-Beauty Aesthetic Summit. I wanted to go over what happened that day and what the future holds. My name is Dr. Roy Kim, I'm a board certified plastic surgeon, and this is the Beauty Standard. The K-Beauty Aesthetic Summit was North America's first all-encompassing conference about K-Beauty innovation. K-Beauty is not a vibe, a nation, or even an ethnicity. Koreo is where the approach was originally developed and refined, but ideas do travel fast. What we're really talking about is a philosophy of beauty that works from the surface and underneath to improve your skin quality, to help you glow. It's about rituals, and really it's also about tissue health and regenerative aesthetics. It is not about just filling in a deeper wrinkle or giving you an unusual volume or contour appearance. This vision of K Beauty was shared with my co-founder, Dr. GA Ju. So there's a little yin and yang in this because Dr. Ju is from Canada and I am in the United States. She's an aesthetic doctor and I'm a plastic surgeon. She's a woman and I'm a man. So yin and yang, we are slightly different. However, we both have a love for K-beauty. Both of us saw the program in a similar way and slightly different ways. We saw the gaps and we saw the commonalities, and we were able to work well together to give North America its first K-beauty conference.

Attendees

SPEAKER_00 1:34

We did have three groups, and the first group I wanted to mention was our audience, our attendees. They came from all over the United States and Canada. And that mix matters because it's not just the geographic differences, but also nurses, doctors all came together to learn about K-beauty. The actual content also was fantastic. Specifically, we talked about the things that exist in the US and Canada that we can do today, but probably some of its off-label include skin boosters, how to integrate them into your patient mix, regenerative cocktails, including exosomes, and we talked about PDRN and PN. We also discussed RF mock needling and other energy-based devices, PDO threads and vector planning, hair regeneration with a lot of the injectables, light devices, specifically IPL lasers and even stronger lasers to give you the best results. Finally, we had stacking protocols because it's very common in K-Peauty to address the surface, just underneath the surface, and deeper tissues to give you the patient the most beautiful result. A lot of these also apply to healing after surgery or bigger procedures. Finally, we did discuss skin care and more importantly the skin care that actually works. I think the biggest compliment we got was that a lot of these lectures and topics have not been discussed at all at other conferences or have not been discussed in such a format. You hear about K-Beauty, maybe there's a 10-minute talk at a bigger conference, but there's never been a conference where every single aspect of your skin and of healing has been discussed in one place

Faculty Speakers

SPEAKER_00 3:05

at one time. The next audience was actually our faculty. So we had killer faculty and going through it very slowly or quickly. Dr. Rodrock was our keynote speaker. Everybody knows who he is, and if you don't, just realize he's world famous. So he was able to talk about K-Beauty, his philosophy, why he likes it, Asian rhinoplasty, and specifically liquid rhinoplasty, and other aspects of Asian skin care. And he actually gave us an update on DGF, platelet-derived growth factor. As far as I know, he's literally the only person who's doing prospective studies, clinical studies on what it does and how to safely use it. Dr. Ju is a co-founder and she gave a great talk on skin care and how it applies to regenerative aesthetics in K-Beauty. Dr. Kay Duri Raj, also known as Beauty by Dr. K, gave a fantastic talk on PDRN as well as PN, what the differences are, and how we can use it today. Dr. Lona Chuk is from New York and she gave fascinating talks on exosomes and other things which help improve the quality of your skin. Ms. Shea Denmark is a PA locally based in Beverly Hills, and she is known as a world expert, a leading KOL or key opinion leader on light-based therapies. So she talked about how to achieve glass skin with light-based therapies and also discussed some other energy-based devices. Ms. Sophia Kim is an NP, an outstanding lecture on achieving glass skin with current modalities, specifically with neuromodulator and skin vive, which is the only FDA-approved skin booster in the United States. Darby Coe gave amazing talks on not only PDO threads, but hair regeneration with aesthetic injectables that exist today and some that are around the corner. Dr. Harry Liu is a Canadian dermatologist. He gave some fascinating, well-received talks on keloids on scars and some unique modalities on how to help with keloid scars. Dr. Marie Jin is my friend and also the chief medical officer of Musley. She has a vast online wealth of knowledge because of her company, as well as her own practice. So she gave us cutting-edge lectures on stacking protocols as well as how to treat significant melasma.

Sponsors

SPEAKER_00 5:14

The third audience and the audience that really made this entire conference financially possible were our sponsors. I can't thank the sponsors enough. Our title sponsor was Allergan Aesthetics, and you've heard of them before, with Botox, Juvoderm, SkinVee, and other products. Our platinum sponsors are Hugel. They make Latibo, which is a Korean version of Neurotoxin, and DB Medical. They have a lot of interesting K-Beauty products. Gold sponsors include Jatema, A Biomaterials, Hans Biomed, Miracell, as well as True Biologics. Silver sponsors included CO2 Lift, GNU Medics, Benev, and Target Cool. What's interesting is that some of these companies have never actually been at any conference at all. So they were able to reveal and show what they can offer in terms of FDA approved or American and Canadian approved products. A lot of them include exosomes, other supplements, as well as skincare, which really really help with healing in terms of just having procedures on your skin or healing after surgery. Of course, the day would not be complete without having Korean snacks in the afternoon and a cocktail party at the end with handboks, social media props, and generally a great time. We were in the heart of Koreatown, so everybody went out to eat and had delicious Korean barbecue, zha jongmyon, or other things. And some of us actually were able to sing karaoke.

Thank You

SPEAKER_00 6:38

So thank you to everyone who believed in our vision. Thanks to all of you who showed up and hopefully learned some stuff. Thank you to our faculty for showing up and for revealing their secrets and techniques so that patient care and patient safety can be enhanced. And of course, without our sponsors, we could not have had this conference at all. So I want to hear from you. Should we hold another K-Beauty Aesthetic Summit next year in 2027? And where would you like it to be? What topics do you want to learn about that we didn't really discuss? And who do you think should be on the faculty? Please leave your comments below and we'll read them all and get back to you. If you have any other questions about the K Beauty Aesthetic Summit or simply want to reach me as a potential patient, in the caption below there's my contact information.