How perming is taught in Seoul, and how it differs from a webinar
A short seminar on one technique, a demonstration on a live model, solutions and the machine on the table, a numbered certificate. How training works at an academy in Seoul.
I am Oksana Prisyazhnaya, and I flew to Seoul to train twice: in March 2026 for a seminar on restorative Korean digital perm with Beati solutions, and in August for one-to-one training in root perm and Korean cold perm. Both times with Hong Jihoon, Creative Technical Director of MASSTIGE HAIR Academy. Before that I watched webinars, like everyone else. The difference between a webinar and an academy is not the amount of information. After an academy you can take a client; after a webinar you cannot.
A short seminar on one technique
In Korea, hairdressers are taught in short seminars: one or two days on a single technique. Not "become a hairdresser in three months", but "digital perm", "root volume", "cold perm" - each on its own. It is assumed that you already have the basics and have come for a specific technique. That is why the Moscow course does not last a week either: one day, one technique, then practice.
A demonstration on a model, then your own hands
The teacher perms a live model from diagnosis to styling, explaining every step. Then the students repeat it. In March I could not hold a perm rod, and that is not a figure of speech. By the end of the day I had wound a whole model. A webinar does not give you that: in a webinar you see the teacher's hands, not your own mistakes.
Solutions and the machine are on the table
The academy works with the same solutions and the same machine that are later sold to hairdressers. You try a solution with your own hands, see how it behaves on different hair, and leave knowing what to buy and why. It saved me a year: I did not go through solution after solution, I took the ones I had trained on. The Moscow course follows the same rule: Beati solutions and a Korean machine on the table, and after the course they can be ordered through Versiya Lab.
What a certificate from Korea is
After the seminar the academy issues a numbered certificate. Mine is No. 344, and it states that I completed the training in good faith. It is not an educational qualification. It confirms that you trained with a specific teacher in a specific technique. For a client it means one thing: the hairdresser learned from the source, not from someone who learned from someone who watched a webinar. The Versiya Lab certificate of participation after the Moscow course is of the same kind: it confirms participation and names the technique and the teachers.
What Seoul does not tell you
How this works on Slavic hair. The Korean school teaches on Korean hair, and that is fair: nobody there is obliged to know ours. What I changed in my work during my practice at the Moscow studio is my part of the course. What exactly to change is a matter of diagnosis and the test strand, not a "Slavic protocol" from the internet. There is no universal protocol.
Why not fly there yourself
You can. Flights, a hotel, the seminar - do the sums. For me it came to two years of searching and two months of preparation, then training in Korea and opening the studio. If you would like the same thing in one day in Moscow: on 25 November 2026 Hong Jihoon works here on a live model, and on the same day I cover the adaptation to Slavic hair. The group is ten people. The schedule is in the programme of the day; the price and deposit are in the terms of participation. How a Korean hairdresser works differently is the subject of a separate article.