The Birth of Scientific Beauty: Changing Modes of Plastic Surgery in South Korea

So Yeon Leem

Plastic surgery is a group of medical procedures that allow people to change their physical appearance. South Korea has established itself as a "plastic surgery nation" on a global scale. According to statistics produced by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons in 2015, South Korea ranked first in the world in terms of the number of plastic surgical procedures performed per 100,000 population, with 898 procedures performed, defeating Brazil (669) and the United States (469).

This research focuses on the evolving modes of plastic surgery around the turn of the century in terms of societal meanings, medical procedures, and personal motivation. It focuses on a trend in the plastic surgery business that developed in the late 1990s, according to which the contour and proportion of the face are as significant as the size and shape of the eyes and nose in forming an ideal attractive face. Through numeration and visualization, abstract attributes like as a face's balance and harmony have become part of the definition of beauty, and the jaw has become a new, major aspect of a beautiful face. Along with double-eyelid surgery, rhinoplasty, and cheekbone surgery, which became popular in Korean society in the second half of the twentieth century, jaw surgery, which was originally developed and practiced as reconstructive surgery, has become popular for aesthetic purposes in the 2000s. Two-jaw surgery involves cutting, disassembling, and rearrangement of both the lower and upper jaws (maxilla and mandible bones), which not only changes the size and shape of the jaw but also transforms the entire face. Thus, the popularization of jaw surgery is critical in understanding South Korea's contemporary mode of self-alteration, which works with the invention of scientific beauty or the birth of new beauty science.

For this study, between 2008 and 2011, I conducted nearly three years of ethnographic fieldwork at the Y Plastic Surgery Clinic (a pseudonym) in Seoul, South Korea. Drs Park, Lee, and Kim were three Korean male surgeons at Y Clinic. All were board-certified plastic surgery specialists who had received their education and training in South Korea. Dr Kim, as a pioneer in the emerging field of aesthetic two-jaw surgery, distinguished himself from Dr Park and Dr Lee, who remained experts in eye and nose surgery, by producing 'witnesses' of his beauty science by mobilizing a wide range of digital images. As a Korean woman, I had both old and new types of plastic surgery: I had double eyelid surgery in the 1990s and later, during my fieldwork at the Y Clinic, I had two-jaw surgery. My body has also been an important site for witnessing various modes of plastic surgery in Korean society. In this study, I investigate changing, scientific modes of physical self-alteration in contemporary Korean society by juxtaposing my own bodily experience with plastic surgery practices at Y Clinic as well as plastic surgery discourses in Korean society.