Why Lee Hyori’s Breasts are a Metaphor for Korean Celebrity Culture (updated)
(Update2: Those technical problems in turn mean that I can’t reply to a notorious troll over there, but fortunately his comments don’t really deserve a reply. Still, he’s no ordinary troll, and you have to admire his skill in trying to goad me into a response)
(Update: I’d like to thank bumfromkorea over at the Marmot’s Hole for telling me about Time and Cinderella, two movies that deal with the Korean plastic surgery industry. I would thank (probably) him there, but for some reason every time I write a comment on that post it just disappears)
(“Liberty Leading the People“ by Eugène Delacroix)
Introduction
Today’s post is a bit of a light-hearted break from all the intense and/or very academic posts I’ve been writing recently, but I think that the points I’m making are still quite valid. Sure, if I’d wanted to convey that impression more effectively then probably I should have used a different title instead, but then I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t usually choose them with SEO in mind (Search Engine Optimization to non-bloggers). Sorry if that sounds a little cynical, but then consider this internet classic on the differences between what people say they read and what they actually do read on the internet. Meanwhile, if pictures of Lee Hyori are what you’re really after, then you’ll find plently to choose from here.
Korean Celebrity Culture 1: Different Standards
(Photo by lej pics. Yes, I know Lee Eun-ju/이은주 on the right committed suicide in 2005, but rather than making my choice of picture tasteless, actually I think that that illustrates my points all the more)
The original motivation for this post was my volunteering to translate this ”news” article about Lee Hyori’s recent chest X-rays for readers over at Dave’s ESL Cafe (I guess I’m a real glutton for punishment). I did last night, but PopSeoul! has already translated something very similar here, saving me the trouble of putting it up.
The article I translated is stupid, as is the endless speculation about whether or not Lee Hyori has received breast enlargement surgery: for one, you can see the before and after evidence for yourself here, and I discuss that in more detail here. Of course she has. Like I say there, I think she was very attractive without them, but they certainly didn’t harm her career, and while I may often sound critical of plastic surgery, I’m not against it per se. But why then, this endless, repetitive speculation? Because she refuses to admit it. Or rather, ironically, being a celebrity means that she’s not allowed to admit it, at least in Korea.
(Photo by mona)
I’ve already written a great deal about the differences between Western and Korean celebrity culture, so let me just give the briefest outlines of them here.
Discounting the big differences between Western countries, to a greater or lesser extent Westerners almost expect their celebrities to live hedonistic lives, and the public and the justice system as a whole gives them a great deal of leniency to do so that is not granted to ordinary mortals like ourselves. But Korea is the exact opposite, and female celebrities in particular are held to impossibly higher standards. Hence when it is revealed that they have taken drugs or had sex before marriage, for instance, then the public reaction is swift and severe, even if they didn’t actually do the heinous crimes of which they’re accused.
And so while Korea has one of the largest plastic surgery industries in the world, and a majority of women have had some form of operation or another, Koreans seem to want to keep this a secret from non-Koreans, and celebrities in particular definitely can’t admit to having received it themselves (with exceptions for aspiring stars).
I think that the movie 200 Pounds Beauty/미녀는 귀로워? is one of the rare popular Korean movies that draws attention to this (I discuss it here); if readers know of any others, please let me know. I also think that the dichotomy between the Korean public’s standards for themselves and for celebrities also partially plays a role in the their toleration of sexually-suggestive dancing and provocative clothes from the Wondergirls/원더걸스 too, because many parents, say, that regard both as innocent and cute would never tolerate the same from their own daughters. But after all the virtual ink I’ve already spilled on that, I’ll wisely stop there and let readers make their own judgements.
Korean Celebrity Culture 2: Promotion of the Mundane
(D-War/디워)
Amongst non-Koreans living in Korea at least, the both the Korean and especially English-language Korean media is notorious for portraying any cultural product destined for overseas consumption as world-class, on a par with Hollywood productions (if it is a film), and enthusiastically received by non-Korean audiences, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Gordsellar describes it as a “standard, near-universal conviction among Koreans that a positive image of Korea must be presented to the world”, and I myself (somewhere amongst these posts) have interpreted the effects of this on the Korean media to be its portrayal of the Korean Wave/한류 as Koreans would like it be received rather than it actually is, and even if this was the only problem the Korean media had, then it would be in a very sorry state indeed. Unfortunately, it’s not, as this and the following case reveals.
By this stage, you may well be asking how on Earth the Korean Wave is related to Lee Hyori’s breasts? Are they a cultural product? Well…yes. Consider this article about her trip to Hong Kong in 2003, but before you do, let me provide some background:
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Men like women’s breasts
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There are some men in Hong Kong
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Lee Hyori has breasts
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Lee Hyori went to Hong Kong
Therefore, even before the big event I would have bet money on some men in Hong Kong liking her breasts while she was there. An article about the test of that hypothesis is not news, and of course the fact that it was in a Korean tabloid also means that it wasn’t news too. But ironically, this celebration of Hong Kong men’s interest in Lee Hyori’s breasts is news precisely because it was in a Korean tabloid.
The mainstream Korean news media is amongst the most populist, unprofessional, racist and xenophobic in the world, and is more than happy to portray all non-Korean men as perverted, pedophilic sexual predators whenever it suits them, so you can imagine what the tabolid press is like. Not unsurprisingly, this means that many Korean men (but by no means all) are resentful of Korean women in relationships with non-Koreans. Hence KoreaBeat points out that it was simply bizarre that a Korean tabloid newspaper would revel in non-Korean men ogling one of “their” women, and I’m suprised that I didn’t notice the incongruity myself when I read it at the time.
Now, I’d be the last person to describe Lee Hyori’s breasts as mundane…but sorry, at the end of the day, they’re still just breasts. So considering all the above, is there any other explanation for the positive spin of the article other than the desire for self-promotion overriding the xenophobia, which, after all, is usually just a mere convenient device to use when Koreans want to deflect attention away from their own problems?
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Sorry to Brian for deleting his comments for an earlier version of this post, but they made no sense in the new version.
In hindsight, I should have kept them and just added a note, but I accidentally deleted the first, and after that I had to do the rest too. Sorry again, and next time I’ll make sure to have some coffee before I start editing!
She has a nice rack. That’s it. There is no talent just breasts. That’s all men need.
[...] on Korean science again. - What does Lee Hyori’s breast a metaphor for Korean celebrity? Find out here. - Thinking about working at a Korean women’s university? Make sure not to flirt with the [...]
I say leave Pawi’s baiting be. I was about to reply to him/her on your behalf, but decided to delete the comment instead of hitting the ‘post’ button: it’s not even worth it when s/he’s heaving about and taking cheap shots on the open threads. If nobody laughs at my jokes, I stop telling them, and if nobody gets upset, Pawi stops harping. Anybody with half a brain knows your site isn’t garbage.
Meanwhile, over at the Metropolitician’s place, you responded to my reference to 200 Pounds Beauty, and I just wanted to make sure I understand you:
Do you mean that 200 Pounds Beauty should be read as a commentary on Korean celebrity culture (especially as it pertains to surgery) more than as a commentary on Korean beauty/surgery culture?
If that IS what you meant, I’ll need to mull over that, and possibly rewatch it in that new light before I agree or disagree with you. Frankly, as it stands now, 200 Pounds Beauty might be the movie I hate more than any in the world (not because it’s badly done, but because in my opinion it presents such an insidious message in such a shiny, cute, likable package). There’s a blog post about it bubbling up in me to further my statement, but I may have to save my main points for that post/rant.
Thanks Roboseyo. Trolls can be fun in their way, but at least most have the decency to read at least some of what you’ve written and only then misinterpret it and/or ignore half of it and/or question your right to discuss it in the first place. But pawi clearly can’t be bothered to even click on the link that’s getting him so upset.
I was a bit tired when I wrote that comment at the Metropolitician sorry, and I was cringing thinking about how badly worded it was afterwards. I merely meant that it mentions the different standards for the public and celebrities viz a viz plastic surgery, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a commentary on it. But until buminkorea helped out, I didn’t know of any other movies that mentioned it at all, even in the minimalist sense that 200 Pounds Beauty did.
Still, I’m a bit more upbeat about the ultimate message of the movie. Sure, on the surface it says that plastic surgery is easy and will solve all your problems, and that the public will forgive any celebrity that admits to it, but I think that most Koreans could see through that and just enjoyed it for the light comedy that it is.
Maybe the reason it irked me so much was because I felt like it was a lost opportunity — it was successful at what it WAS, but in Korea’s culture, with such pervasive pressure to get surgery and be beautiful, especially for women, I feel like making nothing more than a movie about beauty culture, and even portraying it as a path to success, would be kind of like making a movie where alcoholic violence is portrayed as a cute foible, and ending the romantic comedy on the wedding day, instead of showing a month later, when the guy starts hitting his wife. It betrays the young people who learn how to think about the world by watching movies, to not even have a hint of that dark side in a movie, and I know that if I had a 13 year old daughter who’s still forming her self-image, who heard the popsong on the radio, whose friends are all talking about Kim Ah-joong, I’d not want her to see it without a good long talk afterwards.
200 Pounds Beauty achieved what it set out to achieve, very well, but I was simply disappointed that the filmmakers were only looking for a hit, and therefore backed away from any mention that it’s SAD that this is how things are in Korea, or anywhere, and if the filmmakers are just out for money, well, good for them, but I guess I want art to be about more than just making a buck. Sure, the problem might be me, not the movie, but I’m sticking to my guns and saying “This Should Not Be Why We Make Movies,” and it let me, and all its watchers who don’t yet have the critical faculties to notice that the basic message is “All can be forgiven if you’re beautiful” (and this movie WAS marketed toward that audience), down.
I also enjoyed the light comedy it was, but I’m still sad because it could have been so much more, and it missed its chance to push against the cultural expectation, reinforcing it instead.
Hey,
Ooops, well I did post a comment saying your replies weren’t getting through. Sorry! But I hate Pawikirogi so much I could hardly resist.
I’ll probably be attacked for defending health care in the same comment, though, so maybe the attention will be deflected.
As for the discussion above, I gotta say I also experienced the film (200 Pounds [sic] Beauty) as a bizarre apologist film defending plastic surgery as the path to success.
What would have been more interesting is a satire where a very average-looking woman (not outrageously fat and ugly like in the film) becomes a “star-quality” pretty girl and then a pop star, but in the end is discovered to have had plastic surgery and has nothing to fall back on because she (a) can’t sing and has been lipsynching all her gigs (just like the star she was singing for in the film), and (b) she never bothered to develop a personality because she was so focused on her body, so she cannot handle the spin needed to cover for her plastic surgery. And then, say, her plastic surgery backfires.
[snark]Oh, wait, that’s exactly what real celebrity culture is like in Korea![/snark]
As in, I don’t think plastic surgery needs to be defended or attacked, necessarily — it’s not my business what people choose to do to their bodies — but I do think the notion that it’s a path to “success” needs to be examined. The success one can attain with one’s looks tends to be much more transient, and more based on [usually sexist] exploitation. If women need plastic surgery to get a job — and that’s the main defense of its commonness that my students mention in discussions — then it’s an indicator of a social problem in terms of the criteria for hiring people for jobs, because it suggests that looks trumps competence. (Which has far-ranging effects on productivity and on the status of women in the workplace here.)
That’s why I found the film objectionable: because it was essentially a thoughtless defense of a practice that is already widespread, and with the exception of female pop stars, widely accepted already. So I gotta say, I’m more sympathetic to Roboseyo’s reading.
By the way, though they don’t involve plastic surgery, here are some other Korean films that I’m pretty sure you havem’t mentioned, and which might interest you:
얼굴없는미녀. Sexy film about a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder. Very odd in its use of hypnosis as a way of reifying the female lead into a body and an encapsulation of femininity, but without a real functioning personality, and the attractiveness of same for various other characters. (It’s reminiscent of and older film titled 미인 (La Belle) for that reason.)
Natural City — a Blade Runner riff but with a guy whose wife is a “replicant.” Ahem. Like so many guy’s plastic-surgeried wives, who are, physically, replicants of someone else.
청연. I think it’s called this. This was bashed online for being, well, as I put it, insufficiently racist towards Japan. The King’s [Gay Lover Who Was A] Clown hogged the limelight but this was a much more interesting movie. Korean girl emigrates to Japan during the occupation, and does well for herself there despite no help from even her fellow Koreans. Very, very interesting film.
Please Take Care of My Cat. Very real-life, indie-ish film about four young women, most of them not so well off, and their lives.
결혼 미친지시다 (or it was something like that). This was something that, when I saw it with a Korean woman, seemed to be one of those questions in stories like certain moments in Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” from Canterbury Tales, or the famous “The Lady or the Tiger” story — something that’s left open-ended so that the audience can go off and debate among themselves. She argued the main question was whether women should marry for “love” (which in the film seems to mean sexual attraction and passion) or for money. Her conclusion, which surprised me, was the latter, and her impression was that the film, though ambiguous, made it clear that a woman should marry for money/status/stability, and then mess around to satisfy her other needs. Like me, your mileage and conclusion may vary.
바람난 가족 (in English, The Good Lawyer’s Wife). A film about the wages of adultery, it features something that seems to be acceptable in Korean films: adult woman and teen boy having intercourse. (See also the 2000 film 청춘 (Plum Blossom))
The Weight of Her, Yim Sun-Rye’s short film contribution to the first installment of the If You Were Me omnibus (all of which are worth seeing).
301, 302 which you may or may not find on DVD — I’ve no idea whether it ever made it to DVD in Korea (though it’s available on Amazon, Zone 1, so maybe it’s possible to get here, too). I saw in Canada courtesy of a friend who knew I was moving to Korea. It was released in 1995, though, so… anyway, it’s about two women who live radically different lives. Early ajumma version of what’s now called 된장녀, except it turns out, well… she’s not just that. Worthwhile if you can find it.
On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (생활의 발견) by Hong Sang Soo. His other stuff, too, maybe, as it’s all got some weird, gender/sex stuff, and he makes it explicit as a concern of his (one film is called “Woman is the Future of Man,” after all — but this one especially is just… well, it’s kind of like watching Barfly — human train wrecks are somehow impossible to stop watching.
And now, I’ve found a Korean movie that I really need to see, too!
Roboseyo, I hear what you’re saying, and perhaps more skillfull directors and scriptwriters could have added some more social commentary without detracting from the comedy, but it does seem a bit to much to expect from that particular movie.
Having said that, Korea does seem to have a dearth of movies that are also commentaries on some negative aspect of Korean society. As I learned here, Kim Ki-duk/김기덕 is probaly the most well-known director that produces films of that sort, but unfortunately he is little-loved in Korea, in fact often resented for for presenting Korea in a negative light to non-Koreans (not surprising, considering what I wrote in this post). It also doesn’t mean that all of his movies are necessary good either.
Edit: Gord, sorry, but your comment was sent to spam because of all the links, so actually I wrote this reply to Roboseyo before I noticed and approved your comment at…let’s see…11:55pm. I’ll respond to yours properly over my coffee tomorrow morning.
Gord,
well, my coffee the day after tomorrow I should have said.
As for pawi, it’s kind of good that my comments weren’t getting through, because my lack of a response showed how increasingly desperate he was for one.
You and Roboseyo have definitely both convinced me to look at 200 pounds beauty in a much harsher light. In my defence, I have actually only seen it once, although I confess I did buy the DVD, alebit only because it was cheap and I like learn Korean by watching Korean movies with Korean subtitles (too fast for me otherwise).
Thanks especially for your list of Korean movies, it must have taken some time to write. Naturally, I have seen a few of them though:
Please take care of my cat I loved and made me very nostalgic for my university days, but unfortunately my wife downloaded it from a Korean site and it lacked subtitles, and so I didn’t understand as much of it as I would have liked.
I have 바람난 가족 on DVD, but would have liked it much better with a different actor playing the teenager. It sounds so…anti-intellectual, but finding the wife’s attraction for him so unbelievable makes it difficult for me to appreciate the rest of the movie.
Plum Blossom is readily available (with subtitles) for download from most Western torrrent sites, but I think that that reflects the fact that it’s basically pornography. I’d at a bit of a loss as to what social message it has, if any.
Finally, I have Women is the future of Man on DVD too, but I think it’s a terrible movie. Slow, plodding, and viewers are left stuggling to read more meaning into it than there really is because it was just so vacuous. I was very dissappointed with it.
Sorry, I don’t sound very grateful for your recommendations! But I’ll make sure to get stuck into the others you mention.
You make the claim that Korean celebrities, especially women, are held to high standards. This doesn’t seem to jive with what you say about this woman who may or may not have had breast enlargement surgery (I can’t tell from the pics you linked to) going on to have a better career because of it.
I mean, there’s the discussion of it and then there’s the check being cashed at the end of the day.
It’s a better racket–from a capitalistic point of view–to have a more hypocritical dialog about women and celebrities as it opens up thousands of new discussion topics and photo opportunities to sell trashy magazines and TV shows with.
Intelligent conversation doesn’t sell anything, now does it? Well, a few journals here and there.
So I guess my point is this: Is that high standard really a high standard? Or is it simply marketing? I mean come on…
Kevin,
I do still think that Korean celebrities are held to high standards. For instance, I also link to stories of instances of careers being ruined for actions that are not crimes, not the celebrity’s fault, and done by millions of Koreans every day.
As for Lee Hyori, it appears that she had the breast enlargement surgery sometime between F.I.N.K.L. breaking up and launching her solo career. I’m sure that people did bring up the difference in her breast size then, but she wasn’t as well-known when she was in F.I.N.K.L. That may explain the contradiction a little.
But more, I think it’s because plently of Koreans are fully convinced that she has had surgery, but a key to understanding a great deal about Korean society is being aware of the extent to which most Koreans prefer to remain in blissful ignorance of ackward and/or uncomfortable issues. For instance, Korean women must often maintain a virginal and pure appearance in public, and sex before marriage is still taboo, so Koreans certainly appear quite sexually conservative. But while affection in public must still be restrained, Koreans are just as sexually liberal as their Western counterparts behind closed doors, and the empirical proof is the large numbers of love hotels, at most about 15 minutes walk from anywhere except the most isolated rural hamlet (15 mins drive in those cases!). But an unspoken awareness of this is very different to a public admission of say, having sex before marriage, and hence Beak Ji-young’s career being ruined because her ex-manager’s secretly-taped video revealed that she had indeed had sex before marriage, and what’s more, was unrepentant about it. Like I said, millions of unmarried Koreans do it everyday, so why should she be? Still, that was too much for most Koreans.
Turning back to Lee Hyori, I do think that some people genuinely don’t think she has has surgery, and there is definitely an economic incentive to encourage endless debate about it too like you say, but most Korean men are happy to stare at her breasts without thinking too much about it (can’t say I blame them). But should she ever be so bold and assertive to admit that she has had surgery? She’d literally be crucified in the media.
Fascinating. It’s interesting that her breast enlargement was relatively minimal…the sort of enlargement that people in any culture respect as being tasteful…as if going to all the trouble to carve yourself up to get big boobs only to NOT GET big boobs is some sort of greater act of self restraint and feminism. Or something.
I mean, she still appears to be only on the upper end of a B-cup. Would a C or D have ruined her career? Is plausible deniability the line past which celebrity boob jobs must not cross? I’m fascinated…
It’s kind of amazing to me that nobody would be willing to take a chance with Beak Ji-young. I mean, she could still make money for SOMEBODY, right?
Sounds like an opportunity for some unknown producer to make it big…
I mean, are they capitalists or are they not?
Oh, although she’ll never acheive the popularity she would have had the tape not existed, she has made a respectable comeback. You can read more about it here and here.