WHO KNEW?
- Pat P
- Jul 1, 2025
- 1 min read
Pat: Did anyone else catch this? In When Life Gives You Tangerines Moon So-ri plays the middle aged Oh Ae-sun character. Towards the end of the series, her daughter, played by IU, chides her mother for using homemade Korean nail polish. I’d never heard of this before, so I did a Google search.
This traditional method of painting nails dates back to the Joseon Dynasty and involves crushing balsam blooms and combining them with alum to make a paste. This paste is left on overnight to let the color seep into the nails.
For me to find out exactly what Ae-sun used - balsam or something else - I’d have to go back and watch the entire series again.
That’s not happening. Anyway, I find this fascinating!
Judy here. They frequently did balsam nail staining when someone died. Song, can you fill us in on the details?
Yikes…..seems like it would get all over the sheets overnight……but ingredients could be healthier than commercially made…..(or not)
When I was little, my mom used to stain my nails with balsam blooms.
In the countryside, almost every home had balsam in the yard, so in summer, most elementary school girls had their nails stained with them.
We believed that if the red color on the nail stayed until the first snowfall, our first love would come true—just a cute childhood belief.
Nail polish covers your nails and can feel a little heavy or uncomfortable, but balsam seeps in naturally without that stuffy feeling.
The photo shows an orange color, but there’s a red balsam blooms variety that gives a beautiful deep red.
I’m not familiar with what Judy said—usually, moms, older sisters, or aunts would do it for…