Cosmetic Surgery and Son Ye-jin

Ye-jin

Ye-jin and her mini blog: http://me2day.net/actor_yejin!

Korea Herald reported here that actress Son Ye-jin's recent photograph has fired up a debate on her appearance. Korea ranks on top with respect to plastic surgeries. Plastic surgery  or cosmetic surgery is simply not a big deal anymore but if somebody doesn't go under a knife surely that is a big deal. People are not quite satisfied with their Korean-ness.  A lot has been said and written on plastic surgery here and every aspect of it is analyzed in debth.

Now a days, eyelid surgery is so common that parents may promise their daughter an eye job if she passes her college entrance exam reported the New York Times here.  Apgujeong (also called the Beauty Belt with 200 clinics), it is not hard to find young women shopping in department stores immediately after their surgeries, wearing masks or sunglasses. " reported the newspaper. Korean women want a revolution with their face,” said Dr. Park, a leading practitioner of double-jaw surgery. Hence I can NOT understand why all of a sudden it matters?

My Vietnamese classmate YH returned to Korea to get surgery (nose job) and I tried to convince her that she must learn to feel comfortable in her skin and the way she looks and also that she must know that she is already very pretty. She went back but we haven't met for a while and I wonder how things are at her end now. Sometimes we end up doing things just because of peer pressure or the pressures and demands from society that we live in.

By the way, Son, Ye-jin's asset is her typical Korean face but she must be given a space to make choices for herself like everyone else besides people should stay away from controversy theories. I guess she is looking different because she is vacationing in Maldives these days and does not wear make-up etc and seems very casual.
 I am pretty sure that this mini blog of hers is NOT meant for this purpose.
I have to say that plastic surgeons in Korea are amongst the best in the world and over the years Korea National Tourism Organization has started Medical Tourism in a hope to start altogether a different kind of a Korean Wave that revolve around plastic surgeries in particular and other medical treatments. Actually, they have been quite successful since 2007 when it all started. These days the number of medical tourists has reached 150,000 as of 2011. A large number of women from China, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Vietnam etc. visit Korea only for cosmetic surgeries and sometimes to become a look-alike of a Korean actresses.  A very interesting article was published by Joong-ang Daily in which they claimed that:

"7,901: Number of foreign visitors who came to Korea for medical procedures in 2007.

81,789: Number of foreign visitors who came to Korea for medical procedures in 2010.
32.4: Percentage of the 2010 medical tourists were from the United States (highest).
19.4: Percentage of the 2010 medical tourists were from China.
16.8: Percentage of the 2010 medical tourists were from Japan."

The revenues generated by medical tourism amounts to about a billion dollar and hence Korea will increase the number of patients to 500,000 by 2015 and to 1 million by 2020. Cosmetic surgery and fertility treatments are the most sought-after and other popular choices by foreign tourists include dentistry, cancer-related procedures, laser eye surgery and skincare.