Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Freakstar]

I hear Koreans talk about plastic surgery as if they were getting their ears pierced. One of my cousins just got "double eyelid" surgery about a month ago and everyone in her familly and all her friends are congratulating her cuz her eyes came out well. It seems like getting double eyelid surgery is like a rite of passage for a Korean girl in Korea. If you're not born with double eyelids, unless you can't afford it, you must get the surgical procedure done. There's even a guy in my office that wants to get it done during his one week vacation next month...none of the guys in my office tease him about it.

Nose jobs are also becoming increasingly common. I was out with a group of Koreans over the weekend and the girls were talking about getting nose jobs (right in front of the guys) as if they were going to get their hair dyed. I presumed that most of them had already gotten their eye jobs since they all had double eyelids from what I could tell.

I'm all for women bettering their appearances but I think plastic surgery in Korea has gone a bit overboard.

[The_Eyeball_Kid]

And so...?

[Freakstar]

[Real Reality]

Why Say No to Cosmetic Surgery?
By Kim Heung-sook, Korea Times (October 5, 2007)
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/opi_view.asp?newsIdx=11407&categoryCode=169

[Bibbitybop]

I just read the OP's thread about Korean women dating foreigners, and I can't help think the OP wants to judge everyone and everything all the time.

[newton kabiddles]

I'm going to have a tattoo removed. I haven't got an official estimate yet, but people tell me it will be about 2 million.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[mspencer1983]

[Hollywoodaction]

I really don't see why the OP should care. Does it matter if it makes them happy? The way I see it, it's all good as long as they don't take it as far as some of the rich housewives I've seen driving around. A few weeks ago, for example, my wife and I just gasped in shock when we saw the face of the 40-something year-old lady driving the luxury car that stopped next to ours while we were in traffic (I want to say she was a housewife, but she gave off more of the high-class prostitute/gangster's concubine vibe. We were in Ittaewon, after all). She wasn't unattractive. In fact, I'd bet she would look great on TV...but from 3 meters away her face looked totally unnatural. She had a lot of work done, and it showed.

[SPINOZA]

I work in a middle school and many girls - 40% to 50% at a guess - have had it done. This is in Seoul's 2nd or 3rd poorest district too - so in Gangnam the percentage will be much higher.

Middle school girls (and younger) going under the knife to gain artificial foreign features is alarming and despicable in my opinion.

I do think the eyelids look great on some girls and women though.

Food for thought: Koreans love round eyes and high noses but many places are not inclined to accept foreign blood donations. Blood donations are vitally important, life and death, and blood is blood.

Very, very dim-witted people if you ask me.

[billybrobby]

I'm of 2 minds about plastic surgery. On one hand, I think the people who rail against are making a somewhat artificial distinction between plastic surgery and other types of self beautification. People go to outrageous lengths to look good aside from surgery. Braces, earrings, moles removed, zit creams, expensive clothes, thousands of hours in the shower and in front of the mirror. Plastic surgery is just an extension of this, different perhaps in degree but not qualitatively different. Also, nobody scorns somebody for having a cleft lip or someother birth defect corrected. Because we've indentified these as defects which deserve our sympathy and not scorn. But can't general, ordinary ugliness bring as much scorn and heartache as an identifiable birth defect? Who are we to say these people shouldn't correct it? They correct it because of our faults and our shallowness as much as theirs.

On the other hand, yes, the vanity in this country is f*cking beyong belief, and I come from America, so that's saying quite a bit. Now, I'm no idealist. I don't think we'll ever get to the point where appearances don't matter. Because if appearances didn't matter, the human species never would've made through all these thousands of years. But that said, we managed to find each other attractive and f*ck each other all through prehistory without all the makeup and plastic surgery and whatnot. It just seems like as the years go by, the standards get higher and higher and the pressure gets more intense. It's like an arms race. These kids with their double eyelids are like that Dr. Suess story, The Star-Bellied Sneetches, or whatever it was. Do all these pretty faces on TV and in magazines make people feel good? I've never felt anything but alienation. Even when I'm watching some hot girl prance around, selling me some ice tea or a new boiler, and I'm supposed to get a b*ne from it because I'm a man, all I feel is a slight sense of loathing. There's something cruel and selfish about getting plastic surgery. It's like you wanna have power over people, like you wanna get the upper hand.

But, anyways, my point is that the overall problem is obsessive vanity and plastic surgery is an extension of that. But we can't single out plastic surgery as something uniquely revolting.

[mistermasan]

i recently had some"passport" size photos taken for my residency card. had them taken at homeplus.

i was stunned.

the pics were airbrushed. oh, yeah, i look ruggedly handsome before airbrushing but that they airbrush pictures for legal documents is fascinating.

[nomad-ish]

[merochi]

i dont know if it is entirely because one wants to have foreigner features that one would get certain procedures done. it could be that a lid surgery helps open up the eye and gives someone a softer appearance, not to look "less asian" and more "anglo-saxon"

the rate and amount of surgery done in korea does seem crazy, but seeing how i have known people in the states talk openly these days about botox, breast augmentations, and the like-it doesn't seem like it is such a vast difference in the conversations when it comes to surgery between here and the states....if is just more accepted and common that people actually go under the knife here in korea in my experience...but perhaps this is also due to how conjested and small korea is compared to someplace like the us?

[VanIslander]