The Grand Narrative

I was the living dead yesterday, my resolution the night before to rediscover my morning person roots and go to bed on weeknights at…ahem…9:30pm from now producing a crazed insomnia worthy of Fight Club. So, yesterday I originally just wanted to post this article about plastic surgery in Korea that has been appearing in various forms in Western media outlets in the last few two weeks or so. After all, if you type the magic words “Lee Hyori” into search engines then this blog comes up at about number 30 out of 843,000 pages, so I thought that despite my sleep deprivation the least I could do would be to place her reluctance to admit her plastic surgery in some sort of context. Let us not forget that with great power comes great responsibility, yes? In a later post, not immediately but soon, I’ll continue on this theme and translate Korean reactions (front page news here) to the these depictions in the Western media of Korea as the plastic surgery capital of Asia…as if it was all a big secret until a few weeks ago.

‘Makeover Town’: Seoul’s doctors churn out plastic surgeries

Blaine Harden, The Washington Post
Monday, October 8, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea — When they come in for plastic surgery, young women usually bring along a photograph torn from a celebrity magazine.

The photo almost always shows a comely star from South Korean soap operas, which are watched obsessively across Asia.

With wide eyes, sleek cheekbones and delicately upturned noses, the soap stars look alluringly and somewhat numbingly alike — thanks to their own visits to the scalpel-wielding wizards whose gleaming clinics are clustered in a part of this city called “Makeover Town.”

“It is like fast food,” said a 25-year-old banker from Singapore, who a few days ago paid $13,000 for narrowed cheeks and widened eyes. Her black-and-blue face was still puffy and painful as she explained the pan-Asian appeal of plastic surgery, Seoul-style.

“There is no human touch,” she said. “But the technique is very good, and the price is affordable.”

The technique is so good, the price so affordable and demand so keen that Seoul has become a plastic-surgery boomtown. Promoted vigorously by the South Korean government, Seoul’s clinics attract patients from Shanghai to Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Clinics here are desperately seeking skilled surgeons to keep up with demand from women — and some men — who want a face as seen on TV.

The banker with the puffy face, who asked that her name not be published because she had lied to her parents and boyfriend about her travel plans, arrived here from Singapore on a recent Friday morning and by 2 p.m. was under the knife of Kim Byung-gun.

Kim is a plastic surgeon who does about 20 faces a day and runs South Korea’s largest chain of plastic surgery clinics. He has four in Seoul that perform 200 surgical procedures a day, and he has invested in two private hospitals in Shanghai, where he says the Chinese watch Korean soaps and plastic surgery is becoming part of what it means to be a modern woman.

“They want to make their faces just like the Korean stars’, and they know that the Korean plastic surgeons are most skilled at building these faces,” said Kim, who added that his business has been growing by about 30 percent a year since 2000. He has had surgery to erase wrinkles around his eyes and narrow the look of his cheekbones and chin.

To accommodate the demand generated by what he says is a very lucrative business, Kim is replacing his main five-story clinic here in the heart of Makeover Town with an 18-story plastic surgery tower.

Precise numbers on how many nose, cheek, chin and eye jobs are being done in South Korea are difficult to find. But according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of plastic surgeons here jumped 45 percent between 2000 and 2005, from 926 to 1,344. In California, the plastic surgery capital of the United States, there are 1,321 plastic surgeons, according to the state’s medical board.

The ministry’s figures show that the price of cosmetic operations here is about the same as in Thailand but much cheaper than in Japan and the United States. An eyelid operation that costs about $1,500 in South Korea typically goes for twice as much in the United States.

Plastic surgeons, along with dermatologists who use botox and lasers to fashion noses and eyes that resemble those of Korean stars, say that business has never been better and that they struggle to keep up with demand.

“You have to have demand, and these TV dramas provide demand,” said Lim Ee-seok, a dermatologist who gives women faces that resemble the “benchmark” photos they bring to his Theme Dermatologic Clinic. Lim owns four clinics and is looking to hire more expert help.

Medical school officials say high pay is luring more and more young doctors into plastic surgery.

“It is quite amazing how many residents are abandoning specialties like internal medicine and pathology to jump on the plastic surgeon bandwagon,” said Yoo In-kyun, an associate professor of psychiatry at Seoul National University Medical School.

Most of the demand for plastic surgery comes from inside South Korea, a nation of 49 million people that is modernizing at a speed that is fracturing traditional values.

I say “originally” because after putting that up I suddenly remembered that both of my regular readers have been complaining about how god awful boring dry and academic many recent posts have been recently, and accuse me of forgetting my blog roots (here and here). While we all know that I am a man of my convictions and refuse to bow to popular opinion, I do concede that new readers to the blog may be unfamiliar with the plastic surgery phenomenon in South Korea, and need to see it with their own eyes. Hence, it is only with the greatest reluctance that I present the following pictures and translation of an article about 이희진/Lee Hee-Jin (formerly of the girl-band Baby V.O.X.) up as well to help. Sure, I could have put some more up of Lee Hyori instead, but then there’s only so much “news” one women can make, and it’s not like me to miss the opportunity to get into an attractive chess-playing woman in greater depth. (Edit: hmmm, that last bit didn’t come out right)

강영수 기자
입력시간 : 2007.09.14 14:52 / 수정시간 : 2007.09.14 14:54

성형의혹 이희진,’육감 몸매‘ 스타화보 공개

최근 성형의혹이 제기된 베이비복스 이희진이 파격적인 스타화보를 14일 공개했다.

이희진은 SK텔레콤 ‘스타화보’를 통해 과거 베이비복스 시절의 모습을 찾아볼 수 없을 정도의 육감적인 몸매를 과시했다.

제작사 다날에 따르면 이희진은 그동안 식이요법과 트레이닝을 통해 무려 10Kg이나 몸무게를 늘리며 몸매 만들기에 힘써왔다.

이희진은 환상적인 해변을 가진 코타키나발루 넥서스리조트에서 진행된 화보촬영에서 S라인을 강조한 비키니에서부터 섹시한 매력의 드레스, 상큼한 미니스커트까지 다양한 컨셉트의 포즈를 과감하게 소화해 촬영장을 뜨겁게 달궜다는 후문이다.

이희진은 케이블TV 드라마를 통해 연기자로 데뷔하기 위해 연기 연습에 한창이다.

Lee Hee-Jin, whom people wonder whether has had plastic surgery or not, releases a “Sensual pleasure body” pictorial book.

Lee Hee-Jin, formerly of the band Baby V.O.X. and of whom people wonder if has had plastic surgery recently, on the 14th released an exceptional pictorial book.

Lee Hee-Jin, through an SK Telecom-sponsored pictorial book, wants to shake off her image as a former member of Baby V.O.X. by showing off her newly sensual body.

According to the company Danal, the producers of the pictorial book, through great effort, a special diet and working out Lee Hee-Jin has managed to gain 10kg.

In this photobook, shot at the fantasy-like Kotakina Nexus resort, Lee Hee-Jin has emphasised her S-line and posed in clothes ranging from a bikini, a sexy and attractive dress, and a slender miniskirt.  These various concepts’ poses were so bold and sexy that there’s a rumor that her sensual heat warmed up the location of the photo shoot itself!

Lee Hee-Jin is currently very busy, hoping to make her acting debut through starring in a Cable TV Drama. 

And good luck to her. While I’m very happy that she has gained weight and is much more athletic-looking than in the past, as in all seriousness it concerns me that her previous waifness is still all too common and acceptable for Korean women, I don’t know where this supposed confusion about her having had plastic surgery or not has come from: you’d have to blind not to see it just from the picture above. Take a closer look if you’re still not certain. If all else fails, see a link I gave earlier here for before and after pictures.

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