ABSTRACT
In South Korea, diverse traditional therapies and folk remedies, known as East Asian medicine, have been in practice for many years. Most of these use terrestrial plants as their ingredients, but there are some that also use the components derived from the ocean. This also applies to the products in the cosmetic industry that are created based on the raw materials used in the traditional means of therapy. Meanwhile, in Europe, there are various traditional therapies using components obtained from the ocean such as seaweed, seawater, and sea mud, which are also called thalassotherapy. Recently, thalassotherapy has been introduced to South Korea, and the interest in marine products has been increasing, especially among females. In addition, due to the problems of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), there has been a common tendency to avoid raw materials obtained from terrestrial mammals, and consequently, interest in marine living organisms as an alternative source of raw materials has rapidly increased.
