Plastic Surgery In South Korea

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The South Korean’s seeming fascination with cosmetic surgery is frequently reported on both in Asia and the West, largely for its recounted abnormal use rate by both women and men. Though there is a deficiency in dependable data regarding the amounts of individuals who select to endure cosmetic surgery in South Korea, the statistics are substantial. The estimations range from 15 to 30 percent of all South Koreans have endured some method of plastic surgery, the statistics pertaining to certain age groups of females being characteristically greater (Kim, 2010). This is obviously a huge social issue, and one that eludes simplistic explanations, and perplexes academics and policy makers in Korea. What is emerging from this research is that this question eludes simplistic explanations, and in many ways we have only began to understand the multiple discourses that inform people’s decision to engage with aesthetic surgery in Korea.

One is bound to be curious as to what are the causes behind this countries apparent fascination with aesthetics. Current investigation on South Korean plastic surgery characteristically structures it as being a female matter, and localizes it within women’s want to adapt to male control organizations in order to increase their probabilities to thriving within such a system. Some researchers contend that women’s wish to employ cosmetic surgery is an extension of the customary, pre-modern ‘virtuous femininity’ discourse that required upper class women to adhere to a strict Neo-Confucian decorum (Epstein, 2007). Whereas males were projected to excel in all that was of the outward world, to develop into greater men, females were obliged to the intrinsic, in that women’s accomplishment was principally decided upo...

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Kim, T. (2003). Neo-Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer

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