The Effects Of Plastic Surgery On South Korea

Smith focuses on Koreans’ desire to achieve or acquire Caucasian like features. He examines South Korean history in order to uncover the reasons why plastic surgery became so important in South Korean culture. He also explains the benefits of having an attractive appearance not only for social purposes but also for work.

Thesis: Plastic Surgery has been a problem in American society. People shouldn’t feel ashamed of their body, their looks, or be insecure about any body part because everyone is beautiful in their own way. Problems of plastic surgery include expenses, health issues, and medical malpractice.

Plastic surgery began as bodily reconstruction for wounded soldiers in World War I. The surgery developed in stages, starting with correcting traumatic injuries and deformed facial features. The more cosmetic focus began in the 1970’s, with creating “perfected” facial features and making aesthetically pleasing body parts. Cosmetic surgery boomed in the 1990’s, with 1.2 million procedures performed in the United States alone (plasticsurgery.org). The swiftness in which these procedures have infiltrated society has lead to a change in our view of the value of the body. The modern ease and accessibility of cosmetic surgery has intensified the need for external beauty and has influenced the loss of personal identity.

In South Korea, specifically Seoul are filled with plastic surgery clinics causing the country to becomes the world’s highest rate in cosmetic/plastic surgery . When visiting a clinic, most women’s ideal image would be K-Pop idols,generally, the common factors are double eyelids, v-line face, and slim body. It has been estimated that one out of five South Korean women has had cosmetic work done, compared to about one in 20 American women, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. In 2013, American approximately spend $12 billion on cosmetic surgery whereas in South Korea, the price is roughly $7.5 million even with a mass amount of clients, all stated by Chang and Thompson, ABC News. The reason being is simply because “in South Korea, each surgery only ranges from $2,000 to $4-5,000” said Choi, a foreign client who comes to South Korea to undergo plastic surgery. Nowadays, not only adults but teenagers are also eligible to undergo surgery with parental consent. Adults tend to have plastic surgery to stand out from others while most teens want to fit in with peers. According to American Society of Plastic Surgeons statistics, 63,623 cosmetic surgical procedures were performed on people age 13-19 in 2013 according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. However, not all surgeries is for cosmetic reasons. In

In recent years plastic surgery is something that has become a very popular trend, and also where many young people are even lining up for it. Plastic surgery is to reconstruct or repair parts of the body, especially by the transfer of tissue it can be used for treatment of injury or cosmetic reasons. It enhances one’s physical appearance, allowing him or her to achieve a look he or she desires. For example, a women’s buttocks can be enlarged or reduced, or a nose can be straightened or lifted. Many people find themselves changing their bodies and wondering if perfecting their appearance would make life a bit more perfect. Plastic surgery can enhance someone’s level of confidence and boost their self-esteem, but it is something that can have very serious consequences people need to be aware of.

According to an article published by Seoul Touchup, https://www.seoultouchup.com/korean-plastic-surgery-statistics/, rhinoplasty is the second most common cosmetic procedure performed in Korea. In addition to the Korean population, the country’s plastic surgeons provide procedures to nearly 300,000 tourists a year. The majority of foreigners that travel to Korea for rhinoplasty and other aesthetic surgeries come from China, America, Russia, Japan, and Mongolia. Women represent 72% of the patients and men represent 28%.

In a society so consumed by the ideology of beauty, it makes sense as to why so many women these days undergo cosmetic surgery. The definition of beauty has long been obstructed and changed. In the past, if you look at the woman, you will see they are curvy, during this era being thin meant you were poor where as a beautiful and wealthy woman would be plump because she could afford fine dining. As society has changed, being slender has become the new trend, creating the idea that in order to be truly beautiful one must be thin. The movie stars in Hollywood, although most people realize the beautifying changes that are made to the pictures, this idea of 'beauty ' and 'desire ' still lingers in the mind of whoever comes across it. Our society is bombarded with several different ideologies of beauty but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The beauty standards that have been set should not be what are shaping people around the world and influencing them to go through with plastic surgery. The use of plastic surgery has changed from a medical procedure used to reconstruct the wounded or people with birth defects to reconstructing something people do not like about themselves. Plastic surgery was used during WWI in 1910 and after the war, skin grafting grew. The first training program in the United States was in 1924 thanks to Dr. John Davis. In 1950-1959, plastic surgery was used broadly to repair cleft pallet. It wasn’t until about

Plastic Surgery has become a worldwide epidemic in today’s world. The number of plastic surgeries continues to increase since 2010. In today’s day and age, plastic surgery is one of the most popular and requested procedures. Females are opting to have plastic surgery because they dislike their body image. Society has impacted many people by brain washing them to believe that a person’s body has to be perfect. In order for one to be considered beautiful, television and media influence people’s perceptions of beauty.

Plastic Surgery is a controversial topic nowadays. Some men and women believe that plastic surgery is a great chance to have finally the body, face, and even romantic life always dreamed about. In the U.S. the plastic surgery television shows have made these ideas more popular and common than ever. Some men and women have other reasons for want plastic surgery Such as people who want plastic surgery have disfigurements to the face or body because of birth defects or genetic problems. The rise in plastic surgery in U.S. is a bad sign for future. Plastic surgery is not always a good thing for everyone. Cosmetic surgery should be prohibited for teenagers and people having psychological problems.

As of recent plastic surgery has become extremely popular, so popular to the point that it has gotten out of control. Although it has been around for many years, the high standards of beauty in today’s society has recently led both women and men to resolve their so-called imperfections with plastic surgery, making plastic surgery the new norm. Sadly, in this day and age all you see when turning on the TV, flipping through a magazine, or simply going on social media, is models creating an ideal image of what a human should look like. This causes people to thinking that if you don’t look like that, then you are unattractive. Also, plastic surgery creates a big problem because it puts pressure on people with imperfection and insecurities. Despite plastic surgery changing who you are and what you are supposed to look like, many people don’t care because they have don’t want to look like themselves, they want to create a perfect version of themselves through surgical procedures so that society can accept them. Changing what they look like by defining what beautiful is to them not knowing that society has subliminally led them there. To grasp and understand why so many undergo cosmetic surgery is due to the ideals of society in dealing with physiological and body dysmorphic disorders to try combat them with teaching people from a young age to learn to love themselves for who they are and not their appearances.

We live in a society where people worship beauty. As far as recorded history people have gone to extremes to seek beauty. From foot binding in China to wearing strangulating corsets in Victorian era. People from different race and culture have experimented in every way possible way to look beautiful prior to this popular age of plastic surgery. It’s very common to hear people complain about their appearance, whether it’s their crocked nose, thin lips or flat chest. Remarkably, plastic surgery has been the solution for people who complain. Most people tend to think of plastic surgery as only cosmetic surgery and not as reconstructive surgeries. Plastic surgeries seems to be an invention of modern technology; however its roots lie in the ancient history of India. An Indian surgeon contributed towards the establishment of plastic surgery, it was intended to correct physical deformities acquired during birth, accident, disease or war. These surgeries did not gain the popularity it has today until the First World War. It was during the late 60’s, when doctors started realizing the endless possibilities of plastic surgeries. With the help of this surgery a trained surgeon can replace an amputate body part, remove skin cancer, get rid of unattractive scars and visible birthmarks or rescaling a nose or enhance body parts. Today more and more people from different age groups opt for plastic surgeries to obtain dramatic physical changes. These surgeries were envisioned to restore

Today, the industry of plastic surgery plays an important role in the market of aesthetics, in 2014, 15.6 cosmetic surgeries (minimally invasive and surgical) were performed in the United States, which represents a three percent increase from 2013 (American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2015). According to Holliday and Cairnie (2007), social and psychological forces are the main drives of the 21st-century phenomenon of plastic surgery. This phenomenon is linked to a “body ideology” in which women are trying to achieve the perfect body. They modified their physical appearance in order to fit with the aesthetics norms of society. Plastic surgery represents an alternative for women that are unhappy with the way they look. In the late 1980s and early 1990s plastic surgeries were already popular but, by that time women would not express explicitly their desire for big non-natural breast, a big breast that is “to big to be real”. Nowadays, women are looking forward for a “fake-looking” as a way of conspicuous consumption; they want to demonstrate that can afford an expensive surgical procedure to enhance their beauty. Plastic surgeries have become a symbol of status, success, wealth, and fame (Gimlin, 2013).

To sum up, plastic surgery is aimed to make humanity look better. Thousands of people have these operations performed each year. However,

As the Korean wave becoming popular all over the world, more and more people also want to try to imitate the faces of Korean stars or improve their appearances in order to become more beautiful. So, the industry of plastic surgery in South Korea has drawn many tourists’ attention. According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), the number of “individuals in South Korea who undergo plastic surgery have reached approximately 20,000 per 100,000 of the general population” (Seok-Chan, 2013). It makes South Korea become famous as a country with high technology of doing plastic surgery. The Korean National Assembly also passed a medical law in 2009 in order to provide a legal basis for hospitals to attract foreign patients from overseas countries (Seok-Chan, 2013). Moreover, the cost of plastic surgery in South Korea was 80% lower than that in the US or the UK (Denisenko, 2010). As a result, many people in different countries have travelled to South Korean for doing plastic surgery by

Messages within the media indirectly contribute to the rising rate of plastic surgery. Desires to meet the idealisms of media representations are often so consuming that people demand plastic surgery despite all of its associated risks and controversies. To compensate for this up and coming surgical trend, technology has developed more reasonable and attainable options for the public. Millions of operations are now able to be performed on those wishing to fulfill specific gratifcations toward their own personal appearance and/or self-esteem. This is a serious problem in that people are unaware or just simply