The K-beauty muse turned a skincare launch into a red carpet and offered a preview of the busy, genre-bending year ahead, capped by Disney+’s gothic Portraits of Delusion.
Some stars have to work a room. Suzy just has to enter one. On the morning of September 18, the actress and singer arrived at the Olive Young N Seongsu store in Seoul’s Seongdong District for the pop-up launch of Anua’s new “PDRN” line and the event effectively became about her. In an all-white outfit with her hair swept up, she carried the kind of clean, autumn-lit elegance that turns a product opening into a photo gallery. Cheek hearts, flower-frame poses, a wave to the crowd: classic Suzy, effortlessly commanding the lens.
Why this particular partnership makes sense
It would be easy to write this off as a routine brand appearance, but the pairing is smarter than it looks. Suzy became an Anua brand ambassador earlier this year, and the timing is impeccable. Anua a label under The Founders has become one of the fastest-growing Korean skincare brands on the planet, reportedly crossing the $500 million mark and taking U.S. beauty retail by storm before naming supermodel Kendall Jenner as its first-ever global ambassador in mid-2026.
The star of this particular launch, the PDRN line, rides the buzziest ingredient in K-beauty right now PDRN (polydeoxyribonucleotide), the “salmon DNA” compound prized for its skin-reviving, glow-boosting reputation. Slotting Suzy, long crowned the “Nation’s First Love,” at the center of that campaign is a statement of intent: Anua wants to own the glow conversation on both sides of the Pacific, and few faces telegraph “radiant” as instantly as hers.
The bigger picture: a genre pivot on the horizon
Here’s what makes the appearance more than a beauty headline. Suzy is on the verge of one of her most intriguing career swings yet. Later this year, she headlines the Disney+ series Portraits of Delusion (현혹) and the through-line is almost too perfect. The Korean word 현혹 means “to be bewitched” or “captivated,” the exact effect she had on the cameras at Seongsu.
But Portraits of Delusion is no glossy romance. Based on the webtoon by Hongjacga and directed by Han Jae-rim, it’s a historical horror-fantasy set in 1935 Gyeongseong. Suzy plays Song Jeong-hwa, a mysterious woman shrouded in rumor who has hidden from the world for over half a century while Kim Seon-ho plays a painter commissioned to capture her portrait. Vampiric undertones, colonial-era dread, a beauty that may be a trap: it’s a far cry from the sunlit ingénue image on display at the pop-up.
That contrast is precisely the point. Suzy has spent years quietly widening her range from her miss A idol origins to acclaimed screen work in While You Were Sleeping, Start-Up, Anna, and beyond. Stepping into a gothic period thriller is the natural next move for an actress determined not to be boxed in by the “first love” label she’s carried since her teens.
The takeaway
For one autumn morning, Suzy was simply the most photographed woman in Seongsu, radiating the kind of glow a skincare brand can only dream of bottling. But the appearance doubles as a bridge between the luminous public image she’s mastered and the darker, more mysterious territory she’s about to explore on screen. If Portraits of Delusion delivers, “captivated” won’t just describe a room full of camera flashes. It’ll describe audiences around the world.