South Korea, which, as the country with the highest number of plastic surgeries per capita is the country Dr. Christian Troy will most likely flee to when he’s caught trying to turn all of his patients into versions of his long-lost partner, is starting to become really comfortable with cosmetic surgery. So comfortable, in fact, that a growing number of men are opting not only to undergo popular facial surgeries such as nose jobs and eyelid “widening,” but to speak frankly about having work done.
The Wall Street Journal reports that plastic surgery among South Korean men has become more culturally accepted after President Roh Moo-hyun underwent a widely-publicized double-eyelid surgery in 2005. The procedure, which creates a crease above each eye, is popular among South Koreans who want to approximate a “Caucasian look,” which is trendy in South Korea right now because American pop culture is a ravenous monster that craves homogeneity. According to Kang Jang-seok, who runs Man & Nature in Gangnam, southern Seoul, a general demand for bigger eyes and more pronounced noses prompted him to expand his hair-transplant clinic into a plastic surgery clinic, which then morphed into a four-story facility dedicated to completely reshaping men’s faces. Though, according to Mr. Kang, patients initially wanted to be hush-hush about their surgery (and, therefore, keep it minimally invasive), South Korean culture has become more accepting of cosmetic surgery, meaning that patients are feeling more emboldened to change their faces, just like in Face/Off, a postmodern movie about the many faces that actors wear.
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