Let's time-travel to eight years ago: What products made up the bulk of the U.S. beauty scene? A lot of American brands with some European ones sprinkled in, right? Fast-forward to today, and what do you see? All Korean everything. The country's beauty offerings have quickly risen to fame over the past few years. But how exactly did this happen? When did your toners and cream masks start getting replaced with essences and sheet masks? And why now, when so many Korean women have been hardcore beauty advocates for so long? Keep reading, and you'll find out.While part of this answer has to do with all the innovation coming out of South Korea, that's only one side of the story, says Christine Chang, cofounder of Glow Recipe . The other side has to do with how women in the U.S. approach beauty now. "I think American women are reaching a place where they’re kind of embracing the holistic view of beauty — the ritual — and enjoying the sensoriality, and enjoying skin care in general," she says. "They're realizing that you can’t cover up things with makeup forever, that you have to work on your skin from the inside out for that glowing look that’s so desired... So, I think, because that's aligning with the Korean way of approaching beauty, that’s why there’s such a synergy between the two markets." This synergy has given birth to a whole new wave of products.It may seem like a flood of stories about Korean skin care started appearing in your newsfeed overnight. But in reality, it was a gradual process. It all started with the BB cream . Though beauty balms originated in Germany back in the 1950s, they started gaining popularity in Korea in 2006 before making their way to the West around 2011. "BBs first captured our skin-care merchant team's attention years ago, and took the beauty world by storm," says Cindy Deily, Sephora's senior director of merchandising and skin care. "That helped establish Korea’s reputation stateside as a country of skin-care innovation. Soon, everyone wanted to see more." CC cream quickly followed, with the cushion compact on its heels (BB cream in on-the-go packaging, essentially). These alphabet-soup creams were followed by brightening products, then sheet masks, essences, oil cleansers, and more. Four years later, Korean beauty is still holding strong.