Living in Seoul and having access to cheap-and-when-you-want-it skin care is a perk that doubles as a discovery depot for the latest beauty gadgets and procedures to hit the market. I’ve come to recognize that gleeful, mad-scientist grin my aesthetician has when she wants to try something new, usually skipping the whole "asking me if I'm cool with it" part. This is how I first came to get my pores vacuumed, a procedure I would have enthusiastically nodded yes to anyway because pore-vacuuming just sounds awesome. Who wouldn't want that?

In Korea, this suction-powered hydration facial is known as “aqua peel” and it uses a skin vacuum in which a rotating nozzle tip pushes an AHA/BHA solution into the skin and then sucks it up, taking dead skin, blackheads, and other unwelcome pore gunk along with it. The solution creates a centrifugal liquid seal with skin to powerfully pull out impurities while at the same time cushioning the skin from damage and irritation that a dry vacuum of the same force would cause.

The real clincher came when I was shown the cloudy water tank of disgustingness post-procedure. Seeing the little squiggles of sebum that had been hiding away in my pores just swimming around brought me equal parts horror and satisfaction. At one point, I became so obsessed, I was going two to three times a week.

Over time, I could see how this kind of maintenance was making headway into my quest against blackheads. My skin was becoming as smooth as glass. A high-def camera could have come in for a closeup, and I wouldn’t have flinched.