N Korea announces bean-paste skincare breakthrough

Taipei Times
Jul. 09, 2006

North Korea announced a scientific breakthrough on Friday, and it had nothing to do with the missile tests that startled the world this week. Researchers developed a new cosmetic agent to make skin supple, state-run media boasted.

"They analyzed in a scientific way why the hand skin of those who are making bean paste is smooth and fair," state news agency KCNA reported.

Armed with the data, scientists made an agent that helps fight wrinkles and lightens moles and freckles, the agency said.

North Korea, a destitute and reclusive country, seems to inhabit an alternate reality that is disconnected from the deprivation of its own people, let alone the world beyond its tightly guarded borders. Few North Koreans other than the elite get enough to eat, or have the income to splurge on beauty products.

Bean paste is a staple of Korean cooking, and the North Korean scientists who designed the cosmetic agent might be onto something because beans are used in some skin care products around the world.

But the invention is a modest achievement alongside the fast pace of innovation that has catapulted South Korea, another old rival, into the ranks of the world's top economies.