South Korea has been famed for years among Asian women for its plastic surgeons; they embody the fashionable ideal in Asia of “big eyes, a high-bridged nose, and a small face,”
Take Su Hong, a vivacious student from Beijing, she was visiting the “ID Clinic” in Seoul, one recent afternoon to see about her jaw line.
She says her jaw line is too square and she is ready to spend more than $4,500 to have it smoothed out. She noted that a more oval face will get her “a better job, a nicer boyfriend, and a reflection in the mirror that I will like more.”
Her mother, she explains, will pay for the operation. “I inherited my jaw from my mum, and she hates hers, too,” says Ms. Su. “She is happy to help me.”
“It’s survival surgery,” says Park Sanghoon, the doctor who founded the ID Clinic, and who has seen his Chinese clientele jump from 3 percent of the total to 15 percent in three years. “Life competition is so stiff in Korea and China, people who want to survive that competition come here.
And “we know what they want,” says Dr. Park. “Asian people share the same cosmetic goals so it is easy for us to communicate.”
Nearly half the Chinese women who come to the ID Clinic nowadays, says Park, come brandishing photographs of two ragingly popular doll-faced Chinese actresses whose chins they want copied – Fan Bingbing and Angelababy.
The women who come to Korea “know that Angelababy had plastic surgery herself,” says Su, “and they think if she can go from ugly to beautiful, why can’t I? They think they can make their dreams come true.”
Increasingly, say industry analysts, simpler operations such as nose jobs, eye enlargement, and a popular procedure to put a fold into flat Asian eyelids are being done in China by Chinese plastic surgeons.
Unfortunately, there was a recent accidental death of a young Chinese singer under a Chinese plastic surgeon’s knife last November. “I’d heard about her,” says Su.
“I put safety first so I came to Korea.”
“The market in China is still young and still big,” says Zhang Nan, a Chinese woman who runs Seoul operations for “Korea Beauty,” a Shanghai-based travel agency that specializes in plastic surgery tours to Korea.
She says she plans to double her business this year by targeting smaller Chinese cities in the interior. “There are a lot of wealthy women in those towns,” says Ms. Zhang. “Some of them will save for a Louis Vuitton bag. Others will save for a new jaw line.”
(아주경제 이수지 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com