Questions are being asked of the country’s difficult relationship with beauty ideals as it looks to further grow its surgery industry https://t.co/0jGVlgLA3v
South Korea is well known for its affordable and expansive cosmetic surgery industry, but still this number seems extremely high to me:
A vast proportion of Korean women have had either botox or filler treatments, a study out last Friday suggests.
Pharma giant Allergan polled 450 women aged 21 to 55 here, and 42 percent admitted they have had the cosmetic treatments. And a quarter of the women who have not had the treatments yet would be willing to have them in the future, while 17 percent said they would think about it.
Only 16 percent said they had no intention of getting the treatments, which either plump up the face to make it look more youthful or immobilize facial muscles so no laugh lines or other wrinkles form. [Chosun Ilbo]
This K-pop group SixBomb has pulled off a pretty good publicity stunt to get them noticed by releasing a video about their $90k worth of plastic surgery to enhance their looks:
Rounder eyes, narrower faces, bigger breasts: a South Korean girlband is celebrating the country’s obsession with surgically-enhanced beauty by going under the knife to praise the virtues of “Becoming Pretty”.
All four members of obscure K-pop outfit SixBomb went through extensive plastic surgery, from nose jobs to breast implants, before releasing their new single on Thursday.
A series of videos showed the four women visiting a clinic, strutting into an operating theatre and lying on the operating table. Another had them practising dance moves in sunglasses with their heads wrapped in bandages.
“Everyone follows me, they know I’m pretty,” they sing in “Becoming Pretty” — an electronic dance number with a hook reminiscent of South Korean singer Psy’s 2012 global phenomenon Gangnam Style. (………)
SixBomb’s lead singer Dain had her breasts enlarged and her cheekbones shaved to make her face look smaller for the song.
“We all wanted to get some surgeries done to look prettier… and thought, ‘Why not perform a song about it instead of trying to conceal it?'” she said. [AFP]
As cheap as plastic surgery already is in South Korea, it is about to get even cheaper:
The plastic surgery capital of the world is stepping up its game to attract even more clients.
South Korea is now offering tax breaks to tourists for undergoing cosmetic surgery procedures. The government plans to give 10 percent of the costs back to these consumers.
The procedures listed in the new policy include breast augmentation, liposuction, nose jobs and liposuction just to name a few according to Bloomberg News.
The motive behind the plan is to boost tourism after the industry was hit hard during the Middle Eastern Respiratory Virus (MERS) outbreak in which 36 lives were lost and hundreds more were infected. In fact, the country saw a 40 percent drop in tourists compared to a year before in the month of June.
Relative to other nations, South Korea has the highest amount of plastic surgeries done per capita — almost double that of the United States, which is second on the list — according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. [Korea Times]
Kim Bok-soon disliked her nose and fantasized about getting it fixed after learning of the Korean superstition that an upturned nose makes it harder to hold on to riches.
While waiting in a hair salon, she saw a magazine advertisement for a plastic surgery clinic and decided to go for it, despite her family’s objections.
In South Korea, where physical perfection is seen as a way to improve the quality of life, including job and marriage prospects, plastic surgery procedures can seem as commonplace as haircuts.
Kim’s doctor said he could turn her into a celebrity lookalike, and Kim decided to take the plunge, taking loans and spending 30 million won ($28,000) for 15 surgeries on her face over the course of a day.
When the bandages came off and she looked in the mirror, she knew something had gone horribly wrong. Only later did Kim find out her doctor was not a plastic surgery specialist. (Reuters)
You can read more about Korea’s shady plastic surgery practices at the link.
