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any of the world’s loveliest women are Asian, and those from Korea can hold their own with the best of them. This is a view shared by both Westerners as well as Asians.
So why does South Korea have the highest ratio of cosmetic surgeons to citizens than anywhere else in the world? It is reliably estimated that nearly fifty percent of the population have either gone under the knife or would like to at some time and that includes a fair proportion of men.
What’s more this trend is growing rapidly in China and Japan.
The most popular surgical procedures are to enhance the eyes, known as double eyelid surgery and to straighten and raise noses.
In other words, many beautiful North Eastern Asian women want to look more like Western women with rounder eyes a more oblong rather than the heart shape to their faces, having straighter noses and leaner but more voluptuous bodies.
One answer is that the exposure to western fashion magazines, TV shows, films et al which overwhelmingly feature western style beauties that is suffered throughout the region encourages women to conform to white standards of perceived beauty.
South Korean pop culture has become very popular throughout Japan and China with Korean pop music diva Boa Kwon leading the way.
She is known to have had eyelid surgery and her nose heightened and consequently this has inspired many Korean and other North Eastern Asian girls that it is ´cool´ to go under the knife to look more Western.
Perhaps the most telling reason of all for this popular desire for cosmetic surgery enhancement is the conception that embracing the Western idea of beauty is a good career move.
The work ethos of Koreans, Japanese and Chinese is the envy of the world, is it any wonder then that undergoing cosmetic surgery as a means to obtaining a better job or a promotion has become so popular.
Whatever the reasons it is to be regretted that so many Korean women have exchanged their natural and attractive features for a synthetic beauty.
No offense,but this article is kind of stereotyping.I’m a Korean-American and I’m sick and tired of people stereotyping Koreans and Korean-Americans as plastic-surgery addicts.
“South Korea have the highest ratio of cosmetic surgeons to citizens than anywhere else in the world”?
Give me a reliable source.I think you’re making all these up.
“It is reliably estimated that nearly fifty percent of the population have either gone under the knife or would like to at some time and that includes a fair proportion of men.”
Where is the “reliable” source?This is really annoying.And how do you know that BoA got plastic surgeries?Do you have her before-debut pictures?My gosh.This article is so generalizing and annoying.
Please accept our apologies, the article was not meant to imply any derogatory or offence to Koreans or for that matter any body of any nationality who has undergone cosmetic enhancement surgery.
This article was written to illustrate the growing popularity of cosmetic surgery throughout the world.
It just so happens that both men and women from South Korea closely followed by the Japanese have the highest ratio of cosmetic enhancement surgery and practitioners on the planet.
The growing numbers, reputation and cost competitiveness of South Korean plastic surgeons is drawing people from all over SE Asia, Japan and China in particular.
Amongst our sources are the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) “From Our Own Correspondent “ broadcast on 3rd Feb 2005, BBC archive 12th July 2001, Time Magazine archives and a survey by AGB Neilson that found that 86% of South Korean men aged between 25 and 37 believe their career prospects would be enhanced by having a good appearance and body.
Even President Roh Moo-hyun has had plastic surgery around his eyes.
It seems that even the Korean pop star Boa Kwon that you refer to has had no problem with admitting the fact that she has had eyelid surgery and her nose heightened.
Clearly this would be evident in the before and after photos of this Asian super star so to deny it would have been unwise.
There was one source that we are unable to verify claiming that 50 % of South Korean women have undergone cosmetic surgery, we believe that it should read 50 % of 20- 30 year old women have had cosmetic surgery.
True or false, it is hard to deny the fact South Koreans of both sexes have a world wide reputation for their willingness to undergo surgical enhancement to their looks and bodies.
We trust that this explanation will satisfy you that no offence was intended.
Should you care to access Google search on the subject you will find innumerable references to the subject of South Korean plastic surgery and the many prominent Koreans that have had the surgical procedures.
I’m a Korean American teenager and for the first poster to blatantly deny that a good chunk of the youth population in Korea are plastic surgery addicts is just another example of someone burying his or head in the sand, refusing to accept the truth.
Do you know how many parents in Seoul give their kids, especially their girls, double-eyelid surgery as a 16th birthday present or high school graduation present? Even MTV ran a documentary on this asian phenomenon a few years ago, with Asian sources, including Koreans, who had undergone or planned to undergo the surgery.
I visit family and friends there every year and on a number of occasions I’ve seen or heard parents who allow their kids to get plastic surgery because “enhanced” looks, western or not, brighten their job prospects no matter how talented or qualified for the job they are. As the author of the article already stated, many Korean celebs, including BOA, have owned up to their surgeries, so how can you now try to call this article an exercise in stereotyping?
A stereotype is no longer a stereotype if it is true across most circumstances and situations. Maybe with more international media coverage and articles like this, exposing the dangers and superficiality pervasive in our culture’s obsession with a monolithic standard of beauty, beautiful young korean men and women won’t feel the need to alter their looks and self-esteem to live up to a plastic, media-fueled perception of beauty.
Oh, and since the first poster wanted some, I’m assuming unbiased evidence of this plastic surgery phenomenon pervading south korea, here’s a link for your reading pleasure: http://koreanpopculture.blogspot.com/2006/03/understanding-cosmetic-surgery-in.html
I saw “Good for Her: A Documentary about Cosmetic Surgery in Korea”. It is a very poor documentary indeed, since the author clearly wants to make a point no matter what the truth might be. The fact that the documentary has very few interviews and that it doesn’t use Korean sources but only Enlish-speaking Korean sources makes it useless. It’s like going to the US and only asking to Spanish-speaking sources.
With regards to the topic of Koreans and surgery, the differences in content between Korean sources and Enlish sources are striking. Personally, I trust much more Korean sources. The same way that I use American sources when I want to know about what’s really going on in the US, I use Korean sources when I want to know about what’s going in Korea. Most academic and newspapers articles in Korean show that Korean surgeons exaggerate the figures to bring more clients. This is called marketing, and has been around for centuries now. And please don’t use Korean celebrities as a standard for the rest of society. 90-95% of Hollywood actors and actresses have undergone surgery, and I’m quite sure that the figure’s much, much lower if we talk about Americans in general.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that Latin American countires top the table of most cosmetic surgical procedures per capita. Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, etc, are far ahead than any other country in this respect. In any case, it’s almost impossible to know how many American, East Asian or European women go overseas for cosmetic surgery, which makes any statistic useless really. For example, thousands of European women go to Brazil for surgery, but they’re not included in any statistic. The fact that East Asians are more open to talk about having undergone surgery doesn’t mean that they do it more often than people anywhere else.
i agree. not only koreans. but alot of other east asians. im asian, and listening 2 almost ALL my female friends rant about how westerners look better is pure evidence that there is a growing number in cosmetic surgery patients in asia. its odd. the obvious bleached hair, the thick makeup, the thick eyeliner, those hideous obvious blue contacts..are just appetizers. esepcially popular among teenagers. thoguh, asians are not the ones with the most comsetic surgery numbers, i must say that its growing and its sad. most of these asian singers and actresses are like carbon copies. its like “hey, its another asian barbie. WHERE’S KEN?”
A friend of mine had her eyes done when she was in her twenties, met the man of her dream in her thirties, never told him about the surgery and when their twins were born, there was confusion and unspoken tension as both babies have mummy’s eyes BEFORE the surgery.
True story. Honest!
perhaps,theyre surgeries are just more exposed bcuz they dont really hide it.lol
that was the most and unthinkable news that struck me, my god like thunderbolt.if what you informed is really true most of the korean celebs are just plastic stars.thank god, i’ll be able to discourage most korean crazy. teens out here in nagaland india that korean stars are artificial for real.but at the end i guess to be something you have to give up something.
hmm im agree
this article is biased and presents fabricated information. Here’s a link to the statistics of plastic surgery around the world.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_pla_sur_pro-health-plastic-surgery-procedures
I don’t find it very surprising that Japan is #5 on the list, and we never hear about their plastic surgeries since they are very secretive people. Compared to them, Koreans are to frank and honest about plastic surgery. The asian eyelid surgery originated in Japan and spread to Korea, Taiwan, and China. http://www.drmeronk.com/asian/asian-overview.html
Also, why can’t asians dye their hair and wear color contacts without being judged? If a brunette westerner decided to dye her hair bleach blonde and cover her brown eyes with blue contacts, people do not judge her for wanting to be WHITER.
Koreans are getting nose and eyelid jobs here in california. They all want double eyelid and a narrow tall nose. I haven’t seem that much of other asian ethnicities getting plastics as koreans are…….
true fact. If you look at the korean singers (females) they all look a like… IE) BoA and Hyori… look damn a like, why? same surgeon! g
OPen your eyes, have you not seen all the articles? have you not seen Korean websites or the Korean news? Do you open a magazine or newspaper? It’s just part of life there. It’s so accepted. Korean people I know believe so too and some apparently like to get something done just to make them feel better after a bad break-up or something. Now I don’t have a problem with it but it’s clearly a hugely popular thing in Korea. Maybe you should visit more often.
Hey,
Admit it.
S-Koreans love to do plastic surgery. All Koreans knows that. Let them have whatever they want……
Korean government is sponsoring medical tourism. Even with that, only 10% foreigners form both japan, china and elsewhere goes to south korea for plastic surgeries. According to korean doctors, 90% of their patients are korean people.
Many koreans in the USA get eyelid and nose surgeries. There is a girl by the name of LIz on the Tyra Banks show. I think her before nose looked better. The new nose is turned upward. Maybe this was done using a silicon stick to get more height for the nose . I don’t know for sure cuz it only showed her front profile. Her eyes look the same after surgery, except their is a crease to it. The size of her eyes didn’t get bigger. Basically I don’t think she got her money’s worth. Eyelid surgery with Dr. charles Lee is 6K and up. Nose jobs are 6K and up. So did she get her 12K worth. I don’t think so.
After reading the article and the comments, I think this whole issue of Koreans getting plastic surgery is way out of proportion. If you look at the stats, Koreans are NOT even in the top 10. Whereas most western countries, especially the U.S. fall in the top 10 for having the plastic surgery procedure done. White Americans, especially even get “ass” transplant, where they add silicone to their behind to look more like African-Americans. And let’s not even start with liposuction and eye lift surgeries. I would also count getting a tan every week as part of the beauty enhancement. In the earlier generation, thanks to Hollywood, western beauty standards might have came across as something exotic and interesting, but with the rise of Asian countries, especially, Korea and Japan, western standard is no longer the choice. If you notice, it’s always the white people that write articles about how Asians want to look more white. I always thought Latinos, Africans, Middle Easterners also had double eyelids. hmmm…. I have nothing against white people being proud of their culture and heritage but their exaggerated beliefs for wanting people to believe everybody wants to look white is both idiotic and humorous. I’m sure whites go under liposuction to look more Asian.
Just to clear up- It is NOT because Asians want to look “Western” that they get double eyelid surgery. In most cases, people get double eyelid surgery because it makes them look more alert, and less tired. Now, is looking tired Asian and not tired Western??? Clearly, Westerners are not aware of the reasons behind plastic surgery in Korea. Double eyelid surgery is a very simple surgery… nothing like what Michael Jackson got. I think people here tend to link plastic surgery with huge Michael Jackson fix ups but it is not like that in Korea. Also, many people have double eyelid lines that just need to be pinched. So, what’s wrong with enhancing what is already there?
I think double eyelids actually look worse than single eyelids. To me it looks like an unfortunately placed wrinkle.
Hm…you know, the stats should be based on percentages, not total numbers. You have to take into consideration the population. Korea has a smaller population than the US, for example – same with other countries. Either way, I think this whole plastic surgery craze started with the Asian obsession with perfection, and it’s sad it’s gotten to the point that parents will feel like their kids will fall behind if they don’t get surgery. What does this do to girls’ self-esteem and what does this show about the beauty of a country? =(
at xyb,
did you see the second tab on that stats website??
per capita.
s korea is even futher down on the list than you may think.
It is so true… Korean parents do give as a gift to especially their daughters the allowance for the eye enhance surgery…. So those american koreans that are commenting on something u have no idea about, since u live in US and men here love very chinky eyes, you wouldn’t understand the pressure what does it mean to look like everyone in the country, without any different features…. So do me a. Favor and go back to Korea and see what does it feel like living there and be not different at all…. Thanks god I’m not from there and look like eurasian…. My eye have nice eyelids and big, and my nose if perfection, long and straight… And if I did look like the Korean, with tiny eyes and messed up nose, I’d def get the surgery…
I am a Korean american adopted from south Korea and I have in the past 5 surgery and I have a 6th surgery coming up. It a plastic surgery because I have cheft palete and lower lip are hanging out big. so what if this trend goes in south korea?