Rice and Fermentation in Korean Skincare
If you have read the label on a Korean skincare product, you may have seen rice-derived or fermented ingredients. Rice and fermentation also feature in Korean cooking. This piece looks at where rice and fermentation sit in daily life in Korea and India, how they appear on skincare ingredient lists today, and how they shaped HANARI.
Rice, an everyday grain in Korea and India
In Korea, rice is at the centre of many meals. The word bap means cooked rice, and it also means a meal. The informal greeting "Bap meogeosseo?" literally means "Have you eaten rice?" and in practice "Have you eaten?", and people often use it simply to ask how someone is. In India rice is just as familiar. Plain rice with dal, curd rice, biryani, pongal and kheer are only a few examples, and rice dishes vary by region and occasion.
Cooking with rice leaves things behind. Milling brown rice into white rice removes the bran layer, which is different from the husk, the grain's outer shell. When you rinse rice before cooking, the water turns cloudy, and in many Korean kitchens that rice-rinsing water, ssal-tteumul, is saved and used as the base for doenjang soup. Rice is not an unfamiliar import in either country. It is a grain people know well, and that is why HANARI started with it.
Fermentation at the Korean table
Many Korean foods are fermented. Kimchi, doenjang (soybean paste), gochujang (chilli paste), ganjang (soy sauce) and jeotgal (salted seafood) are all fermented. Kimjang, the late-autumn custom of families and neighbours making winter kimchi together, was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. Rice and fermentation also meet in makgeolli, a drink made by fermenting rice with nuruk, a traditional fermentation starter.
India has its own rice ferments. Common rice-and-urad-dal versions of idli and dosa use fermented batter. Several regions also have a dish of cooked rice soaked in water and left to sour: basi pakhala in Odisha, panta bhat in Bengal, pazhaya sadam in Tamil Nadu. The idea of rice slowly changing in a bowl is not a foreign one in India.
How rice and ferments show up on ingredient lists
Some Korean skincare products contain rice-derived ingredients, such as rice bran extract or rice bran water, or fermented ingredients.
In cosmetics, a fermented ingredient is usually made by growing microorganisms such as yeast or lactic acid bacteria on a material like rice. The result may then go through further processing, including filtration. In international ingredient names (INCI), the word "Ferment" indicates fermentation. "Filtrate" only means something was filtered, so on its own it does not tell you whether fermentation was involved.
One thing worth keeping in mind: an ingredient name tells you what is in a product. It does not, on its own, tell you how the product will feel or what it will do. That is something only testing can show.
How HANARI took its cue from rice and fermentation
When I first started planning HANARI, rice stood out because it is familiar in both Korea and India. Korean food fermentation traditions also inspired me.
The final formula includes rice bran water and rice-derived and fermented ingredients. All three daily products, Clean Start Gel Cleanser, Even Days Serum and Air-Fit Gel Cream, contain them, and the full INCI list will be published on this site later. The three products are planned to launch together in December 2026. None of them is on sale yet, and we will not make efficacy claims until those effects are verified.
For common questions about rice ferment, see our FAQ. The story of how the brand began is on How HANARI started.