One of the most common dilemmas of any woman around the world is dark circles. Not only are they unappealing but they can literally age you. Not only are we desperate to keep our dark circles hidden under thick concealers and eye makeup, we tend to look for many ways to reduce the discoloration not only under our eyes but around it.

And for that reason, we rely once again on the international standards when it comes to skincare: Korean eye creams. We’ve compiled a list of the best Korean eye cream for dark circles.

How are eye creams different from face creams?

One of the common skincare routines is treating the skin around your eyes the same way you’re treating yourself. Remember that the skin around your eyes have less facial muscles and have thin layers of skin. The skin around our eye is then more delicate and more sensitive making it prone to wrinkles and dark circles.

To combat these skin problems, we rely on eye creams that specifically target and care for the delicate features of our skin. Eye creams have a different composition than creams meant for the face. Most eye creams come with less retinol and more caffeine content to combat the appearance of dark circles and puffiness.

What causes dark circles?

The most common cause of dark circles around our eyes is due to lack of sleep. But that’s not the only reason why dark circles form. Many other reasons are:

• allergies, including hay fever
• Hyperpigmentation around the eyes or the face
• reduction of fatty tissue around the eyes
• thinning of the skin under the eyes
• Illnesses such as dermatitis, iron-deficiency anemia, and thyroid conditions
• overexposure to sunlight
• irritants such as constant rubbing of the eyes, makeup, and eye medication like eyedrops for glaucoma
• aging
• smoking
• genetics
• dehydration

Top Korean Eye Creams for Dark Circles

Now, let’s review the best Korean eye creams for dark circles.

Mizon Cosmetics Snail Repair Eye Cream

Mizon is amongst the well-known and loved manufacturers of eye creams in Korea. Among their many eye cream products, the best by far for dark circles is the Snail Repair Eye Cream.

Active Ingredients:

This eye cream is made of 80% snail mucin. Snail mucin is a widely used ingredient known for its regenerative effects. Most dark circles are caused by many stressors. The snail mucin helps regenerate the skin under the eyes and effectively reduces the appearance of dark circles.

Benefits: What’s great about this is that it’s also great in helping reduce wrinkles especially crows feet and deep lines. It’s also great for all skin types.

Sulwhasoo Essential Rejuvenating Eye Cream

Considered as a premium brand in Korea, Sulwhasoo is evidently more expensive. This brand is popular for its use of traditional Korean herbal medicine mixed with the latest skincare technology.

Active ingredients:

The key natural ingredient used in this eye cream is six-year-old ginseng. This essential ingredient is what makes this product very expensive. This is one of the best selling eye creams in Korea because it is light and very easy to apply. It doesn’t give the skin that sort of stickiness that many thick eye creams have. Red ginseng helps restore the youthfulness of your eye zone. Together with green tea, pomegranate, and honey enzymes, this eye cream is certainly a treat for brightening dark circles.

AHC The Real Eye Cream For Face

AHC The Real Eye Cream for Face is a brand that became popular outside Korea. The name itself says that the eye cream is not just ideal for the eyes but also for the entire face.

Active Ingredients:

This eye cream is literally made of 15% water with water-soluble collagen, and hyaluronic acid. Collagen is essential in bringing out the freshness of your skin, it helps regenerate the lost elasticity around your eyes thus reducing the dark circles and fine lines around your eyes. Furthermore, AHC eye cream for the face acts as an all-in-one facial moisturizer. It effectively softens your skin and reduces fine lines while also preventing it.

This is great for those who often spend time in front of computers or who work late at night. The collagen and hyaluronic acid reduces the puffiness caused by radiation and also revitalizes the skin not just around the eyes but also in the face reducing dark circles and even skin discoloration.

Nature Republic Snail Solution Eye Cream

Nature Republic creates natural concoctions ideal for your skin. Nature Republic is a highly acclaimed Korean beauty brand with most of their products derived from nature. Our Nature Republic eye cream pick for dark circles is the Snail Solution Eye Cream.

Active Ingredients:

Snail mucin is gaining popularity for its strong anti-aging properties. But one of the prominent features of snail mucin is its regenerative properties. It not only provides moisture to the skin especially under the eyes, it also brightens dark spots. The Nature Republic Snail Solution Eye Cream contains 70% high-quality snail mucin. It is an active ingredient in lightening the dark circles around your eyes. It also helps in diminishing acne scars or dark spots around your eye zone. Snail mucin stimulates the skin’s ability to produce collagen and actively lessens the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Aside from regenerating your skin, you’ll notice the reduction of redness and puffiness around your eyes. This is a great eye cream for those who are prone to pimples and acne. With a highly reactive skin, having an eye cream with fewer chemical content will prevent more break-outs from occurring while treating and reducing scars brought about by acne.

Etude House Moistfull Collagen Eye Cream

Etude House is a consumer brand that produces high-quality products at prices affordable by everyone. They specialize in creating products that are fit for all skin types. Their products are easy to find and ost definitely easy to get your hands on.

Active Ingredients:

As the name suggests, Moistfull Collagen eye cream is part of the Moistfull Collagen Series by Etude House but the different creams are created to target different problem areas of the face. The eye cream contains 63.4% collagen designed to moisturize and add nutrients to your skin.

Collagen makes your skin more elastic and relieves irritants that cause dark circles. If you have dark circles resulting from reactions due to makeup, medicine or dryness caused by illnesses, this is a great solution for you.

Innisfree Perfect 9 Repair Eye Cream

Innisfree is another consumer product that really caters to everyone’s needs. But what’s unique about Innisfree is that it is perfect for those with sensitive skin. Those who frequently break out will love products by this brand.

Active Ingredients:

The perfect 9 Repair Eye Cream is a part of a series that’s designed to combat the 9 signs of aging with 9 active ingredients. It’s nine ingredients are derived from 9 plants. Green tea and fish mint extracts are known to brighten the skin reducing the dark circles that form around the eye.

The tangerine peel, cocoa, Japanese pepper, and mushroom extracts are antioxidants that also relieve itchiness, dryness, by adding hydration and locking it into the skin. These ingredients add that youthful glow and tightness around the eyes.

Squalene, Orchid, and Raspberry extracts provide that radiant look by effectively moisturizing the skin around the eyes. With all these ingredients you’re guaranteed to get not just lightened dark circles but a lifted look with a radiantly looking skin around the windows of your soul.

The cream is pretty light and easy to spread. A small amount goes a long way and really gives great results. This is perfect for sensitive skin.

Missha Geum Sul Vitalizing Eye Cream

Missha is among the most loved K-beauty brands in and outside Korea. With numerous lines of beauty products for every skin and hair needs, Missha is the go-to brand. This eye cream, for example, is a premium eye cream for men and women in their 30s and above.

Active Ingredients:

This golden concoction is made from ginseng water, ginseng extract, reiki mushroom extract, and deer antler extract. The entire mixture is made from natural ingredients free from parabens and chemical additives.

The Missha Vitalizing eye cream helps target dark circles caused by sun damage and allergies. It revitalizes the skin around the eyes reducing the darkness and effectively brings a lift to your eyes. It has intense moisturizing properties and the ginseng extracts reduce fine lines effectively making this an intensive moisturizing eye cream.

The Geum Sul Vitalizing Eye Cream is perfect for women who are 30 and above. This is when the eyes start to sag and are in dire need of great moisturizing to prevent it from getting wrinkles and sagging eye bags. It is also a great eye cream for combination type skin.

Laneige Perfect Renew Eye Cream

Like Innisfree, this is a beauty brand made for the younger generation. The Laneige line offers affordable beauty products that cater to the needs of the typical woman and the renew eye cream is no different.

Active Ingredients:

Made with Niacinamide and Green tea extracts, this eye cream targets eye problems directly. It aims to reduce eye puffiness as well as dark circles caused by stress like lack of sleep, dehydration, exposure to radiation and sunlight, and more.

Niacinamide is a form of vitamin B-3 that replenishes the skin. It helps bring back the suppleness of your eye zone and brightens it thus reducing the dark circles under your eyes.

The Laneige Perfect Renew Eye Cream is a real treat for dryness and skin irritation. It’s a wonderful eye cream for those who are looking for hydration. What’s good about it is that it also works well with tired skin or skin that has drastically changed due to external factors.

Skinfood Royal Honey Essential Eye Cream

Skinfood loves turning naturally occurring food into great beauty products fit for all types of skins and ages. The Royal Honey Essential Eye Cream is not just a name but actually made from real honey.

Active Ingredients:

The Royal Honey Essential Eye Cream is a product of fermented honey. Carefully left in the beehive for two months, the honey ages and produces more nutrients that are great for the skin especially the skin around our eyes.

Honey has antibacterial properties making it a great moisturizer and protector. Women who often wear makeup are prone to breakouts as well as infections. It is also great for people who suffer from psoriasis, dermatitis, and other skin conditions, it protects broken skin from getting all the more damaged. Plus it hydrates broken skin and prevents the wounds from getting bigger and from causing any scars.

This is the perfect eye cream for those who have skin diseases or those who suffer from hypersensitive skin. Honey also has anti-aging properties, so it’s great for women in their 20 and those who are in their late years in life. The Skinfood Royal Honey Eye Cream is pretty thick though so it’s best to apply it on the latter stages of your skincare routine.

Amore Pacific Moisture Bound Rejuvenating Eye Treatment Gel

Amore Pacific is a massive beauty line in Korea. In fact, it owns Innisfree and Laneige. However, under the different beauty lines, they target various women and their skin types. The Amore Pacific Rejuvenating Eye Treatment Gel is a premium product created to targe women who suffer from constant eye puffiness and hyperpigmentation.

Active Ingredients:

What’s about the Amore Pacific Treatment Gel is that it does more than what cream can do. It treats problem areas above the eye specifically dark circles and puffiness. It contains Hesperidin, a natural chemical taken from citrus peels. It reduces dark circles from deep within the layers of the skin aiding dark circles caused by hyperpigmentation. It also contains caffeine, an active ingredient that reduces swelling and the appearance of puffiness around the eyes.

Amore Pacific also has its exclusive 5-Hydra Complex formulation. This secret formula provides a moisturizing barrier on the skin, especially around the sensitive eye zone. In addition, it contains bamboo sap that brings rich hydration making your eyes look supple and radiant.

Amore Pacific is a wonderful product fit for those who have dark circles due to chronic diseases, genetics, hyperpigmentation, and stress. It’s also ideal for all types of skins and ages.

TonyMoly The Chok Chok Green Tea Watery Eye Cream

If you’re looking for a K-beauty brand that is dedicated to bringing out the radiance of your skin, then TonyMoly is the product of choice. TonyMoly offers gentle products that fit all skin types and ages. It is also a product of choice for teens and women in their early 20s.

Active Ingredients:

Green tea is an active ingredient in most beauty products, but the Chok Chok Green Tea Eye Cream comes from a concoction consisting of 40% fermented green tea. Left to ferment for an entire year, the fermented extract brings out a more potent anti-oxidant that promotes moisture-retention. It also nourishes the eye area that adds a natural lift to sagging eye bags and darkening circles.

The TonyMoly Chok Chok Green Tea Cream is a light eye gel that is easy to spread. It promotes easy absorption making it an ideal eye cream to use in the first stages of your skincare routine. This is a wonderful product for all skin types especially for those with oily skin.

Saturday Skin Wide Awake Brightening Eye Cream

Bringing out your weekend glow with Saturday Skin is the constant theme of Saturday Skin. As one of the most popular brands outside Korea, Saturday Skin really doesn’t disappoint, and for that reason, we chose the Wide Awake Brightening Eye Cream.

Active Ingredient:

Saturday Skin Brightening eye does exactly as it says it would TO BRIGHTEN. With date seed and avocado extracts, the eye cream revitalizes the skin around the eyes. To combat dark circles, it lightens the skin in your eye zone and effectively reduces the puffiness by nourishing tired loose skin. It also adds a lift and lightens the skin to prevent dark circles from forming while actively lightening the discoloration.

It’s a very effective moisturizer not just for the eyes but for the face as well. It’s an ideal eye cream for those who are looking for a light and easy to absorb product. This is great for the younger generation especially women in their 20s. It’s great in retaining the firmness of the skin and slows down the aging process.

Final Verdict

Looking back at our list of the best Korean eye cream for dark circles, you’ll find that all of them work well especially if you get the right one for your needs. Knowing the cause of your dark circles will help you identify which ones would suit your needs in significantly lightening the dark circles. However, we do have our favorites from this list.

Our Top Pick for effective brightening of the dark circles around your eyes is the Missha Geum Sul Vitalizing Eye Cream. It targets the deep cause of the dark circles and significantly lightens the skin under and around the eyes. For effective brightening that also targets fine lines, we suggest that you buy AHC Real Eye Cream for the Face or any of the Mizon Season Eye Creams.

With sensitive skin, it’s best to opt for the Innisfree Repair Eye Cream. One a special note, one main problem faced by many women is the dark circles around the eyes caused by heredity. It’s hard to turn genetics around but with the Amore Pacific treatment Gel will help lessen (but not eradicate) dark circles.