Is Beauty Of Joseon’s New PDRN Serum Worth The Hype? – Beautiful With Brains

Last Updated on July 22, 2026 by Giorgia Guazzarotti

Beauty of Joseon Pore Firming Serum with Red Bean PDRN & Peptides for Deep Pore Care immediately caught my eye. This baby promises to improve the look of large pores with barrier-friendly ingredients and the sciencey beauty blogger in me goes, “Wait, what?! These are two very different concerns!” If you want to reduce pores, you need salicylic acid – and there’s not a drop of it in here. Barrier-friendly ingredients moisturise skin, but don’t necessarily do anything for pores. So, how does this work? In this review, I’ll share with you what this serum can and can’t do and whether it deserves a place in your skincare routine:

Key Ingredients In Beauty Of Joseon Pore Firming Serum With Red Bean PDRN & Peptides: What Makes It Work?

RED BEAN PDRN, A.K.A. SODIUM DNA + PHASEOLUS ANGULARIS SEED EXTRACT

Straight up: this is a made-up name for two totally separate ingredients. Sodium DNA is the actual PDRN, chopped-up salmon or trout DNA that’s supposed to tell your skin cells to repair themselves. Phaseolus Angularis is red bean extract.

Here’s how PDRN actually works: those DNA fragments bind to a receptor your cells already have (called adenosine A2A) and that binding ramps up repair processes your skin was going to do anyway. And yeah, your instinct is right. PDRN in a serum is hype. PDRN does something when injected into the skin. In a serum, it barely gets through the skin. So it’s not doing the “cellular renewal” thing the brand implies. Best case, it’s a mild hydrator.

The red bean half is actually the better ingredient here, weirdly. A study on it found it protected skin cells from UV damage and even helped boost collagen production, and a follow-up human trial found a cream with it visibly improved wrinkles. Still, the cream also contained a ton of hydrating ingredients, like glycerin and shea butter, so they’re more likely to be responsible for this effect.

DIPEPTIDE DIAMINOBUTYROYL BENZYLAMIDE DIACETATE (SYN-AKE

This is a lab-made copy of something found in snake venom, and what it actually does is block signals between your nerves and tiny facial muscles. Kind of like a very weak, temporary, topical version of Botox. It relaxes the muscle, not stimulates collagen.

Does that work? Actually kind of, yes. One study found a 4% version of this peptide cut wrinkle size by up to 52% after 28 days. But (and this is a HUGE but), it’s the last ingredient on this product’s label. In ingredient lists, that means trace amounts, nowhere close to the 4% that actually did something in that study. *sighs*

Related: All You Need To Know About Syn-Ake In Skincare Products

NIACINAMIDE

This is the one ingredient in this serum that’s actually doing what it’s supposed to. No smoke and mirrors here. What it does for pores isn’t magic: it just calms down oil production. Less oil means pores don’t get stretched out and puffy-looking. A classic study on 2% niacinamide found it significantly cut down oil production on the face over four weeks. Another study shows 4% niacinamide on its own shrank visible pore count by nearly 15% after 8 weeks.

Performance & Personal Opinion

This one’s genuinely pleasant to use, texture-wise. It goes on light, sinks in fast, and for the first minute or so it sits slightly tacky on skin before settling into something smooth and silky. There’s no fragrance either. It comes in a dropper bottle, which does the job of controlling how much you’re using, though a pump would probably feel a bit less fussy for daily use.

Short-term, the win is real but modest: skin feels smoother, plumper, more comfortable almost right away. Just do not expect more than this. There’s nothing here that can firm anything, boost collagen, or the like. It’s simply a niacinamide serum for pores. Period.

Price & Availability

$17.00 at Sephora, Stylevana and Yes Style

The Verdict: Should You Buy It?

Buy it if you want a genuinely nice, well-made niacinamide serum with a lovely texture and a solid oil-balancing effect. Don’t buy it if you’re buying it for “Red Bean PDRN” or the peptide, because neither of those does much of anything. Strip away the branding and what’s actually in the bottle is a barrier-friendly, sebum-regulating serum that’ll leave skin smoother and calmer within days, with any real pore improvement showing up gradually over weeks rather than overnight.