Plastic Not So Fantastic

While South Korea has long boasted the highest rate of plastic surgery in the world, a backlash is emerging in the beauty-obsessed nation.

- Amelia Lester

When Singaporean fashion designer Jacqueline Koh, who now lives in Europe, decided she wanted to look like a Japanese anime character, she knew exactly where to go to achieve her goal. “Korean plastic surgeons are very well practised because they do so many procedures every day,” she says of the eight operations that she underwent in Seoul in 2011. These included a breast enhancement to take her original 32A cups to 34C, an operation to create a V-shaped chin, as well as an otoplasty to pin her ears back, rhinoplasty for a higher nose bridge, eye-lengthening procedures and a cheekbone reduction to make her eyes look bigger in contrast.

For 13 years, Kim Ji-yeon was desperate to put her face in the hands of skilled Korean plastic surgeons. From the time she was seven years old, Kim couldn’t stand how she looked and spent most of her formative years destroying photographs of herself, an unheard-of pastime in image-obsessed Korea. Her parents caved and finally paid for the double jaw surgery that would transform her looks. Even post-surgery she devoted herself to keeping up with the impossibly high Korean beauty standards, spending two hours a day applying skincare and make-up and splurging some $200 a month on the latest products.

For Kim Bok-soon, the urge to go under the knife was motivated by more traditional needs. In South Korea, physical perfection is seen as a way to improve job and marriage prospects and is wrapped up in long-held beliefs. When she found out that a Korean superstition declared her upturned nose would stop her from building wealth, she took out excessive loans to undergo the surgery – and pushed for others, eventually agreeing to 14 in one day.