I went to get plastic surgery on my nose. I left feeling crummy about my entire face.

Every time I visit South Korea, where my parents emigrated from six years before I was born, I am plagued with anxieties about my appearance.

I developed the habit the first time I visited, when I was 14 and my family offered me double eyelid surgery as a middle school graduation gift. They urged me not to take offense. These procedures, performed 200,000 times a year in the world capital of cosmetic surgery, are common rewards for young Koreans with good grades.

By then, I'd long been preoccupied with my looks. My Korean American friends and I in the suburbs of New Jersey were transfixed by the beauty of the Korean actresses ubiquitous in our local video store — Song Hye Kyo, Jun Ji Hyun, Choi Ji Woo — and we experimented with ways to approximate their exquisite double eyelids. We cut scotch tape into vaguely crescent shapes and applied them to our monolids, poking and prodding to the point of redness. During class, we used the tips of un-clicked ballpoint pens to trace creases above our eyelids, desperately hoping the folds would hold.

Still, I refused my family's offer. At 14, I maintained a level of self-righteousness about my natural, virgin features, steadfast in my belief that permanent body modification was a tool of patriarchy to control and subdue women.

But when I visited family in Korea earlier this year, at 31, something in me had changed. Maybe decades of the constant barrage of images of immaculate Korean celebrities had finally broken me. Maybe turning 30 snapped my stubborn sanctimoniousness. I'm also driven by vanity, which is not an immaterial pursuit in modern society. (In one survey of hiring managers in South Korea, roughly half reported they'd based job offers on candidates' appearances. Until the practice was outlawed in 2017, many employers required photos along with job applications.) And in the 17 years since my family broached the idea, cosmetic surgery has become far more common, far less taboo, and much more accessible.

Soon after I landed in Seoul, it started with creams. Olive Young, the Korean equivalent of Ulta, was having a sale. I listened intently as the sales clerk in a white lab coat informed me — with the conviction of an actual dermatologist — what I needed to address my dry, flaky winter skin. Soon, I was ready to spend nearly $200 on an entire line of products: cleanser, essence, serum, and moisturizer. When I told her I lived in America, she insisted I needed two of each. I obliged.

I considered more intensive, but budget-friendly beauty services: eyelash perms ($75) to elongate and lift my stubbornly downward-facing, short eyelashes; Botox ($200) to address the ever-deepening wrinkles I'd just started to develop; hyaluronic injections ($380), which would hydro-bomb my dry skin through direct penetration. My Korean friends and family encouraged me to try these procedures. After all, they are all nonpermanent treatments that are cheap by American standards.

Then I booked an appointment at one of the first places I found when I Googled "plastic surgery: Seoul." In 2024, there were 457 registered plastic surgery clinics in the world-famous Gangnam district, which is only 15 square miles. The clinic was almost too easy to find. Once I reached the station on the subway, the female voice over the train's intercom cheerily advertised the clinic's location, as if it were a historic landmark or government building.

I entered the clinic with insecurities about my flat nose; I left with intensifying concern about the rest of my face.

As I stepped into the clinic's hallway entrance, I was greeted by a towering screen featuring an animated Girl with a Pearl Earring, who winked at me repeatedly on a loop. When I entered the front office, the first person I encountered was a woman who appeared to be in her 70s, her face heavily bandaged and bruised from recent procedures. It looked as though she'd just been in a severe car accident. I shuddered at the idea of subjecting my face to the same suffering. I also wondered why the clinic allowed her to loiter in the waiting room, where the other patients were surely contemplating the outcomes of their own procedures.

Yet when I looked around, no one else seemed fazed. Many had likely already experienced such gore: In 2021, South Korea led the world with 8.9 plastic surgery procedures per 1,000 people; the US ranked 6th, with 5.9 per 1,000 people.

A few minutes later, one of the immaculately molded receptionists called my name and led me to a woman I'll call Serena, a similarly spotless consultation manager with near-perfect English. She led me through a maze of rooms where I was photographed and, inexplicably, x-rayed. After examining my results, Serena and an eye and nose surgeon informed me matter of factly that my eyes were too sleepy, narrow, and small, my button nose too flat and "droopy" (with too much dense skin at the tip), my chin too stout, and my jawline too flabby and ill-defined.

All of these critiques were couched in gentle questions about my desired appearance — but I couldn't help but feel that I was being politely manipulated to agree with their conclusions about how my face should look. These were experts indeed.

Serena asked me how I felt about my chin. Honestly, I had never even thought about it, I told her. Pointing with a stylus at the unflattering photos she had taken of me, she stated, flatly, that my chin was tragically short, rendering the rest of my face "too wide and circular." The one compliment she and the doctor could muster was that my nostrils were "not too big."

Serena also diagnosed me with "ptosis," what some Korean plastic surgeons call a "condition" of those who have "difficulty opening their eyes completely" and "weakened eye-opening muscles." (I don't have difficulty opening my eyes, and doubt my eye-opening muscles are defective in any way.)

With the right procedures — including potentially recovering cartilage from my (or someone else's) rib in order to fill out my nose bridge, "correcting" the ptosis above my eyeballs to lift my eyelids and redefine my now-naturally occurring folds, ripping open the inner corners of my eyes to widen them, as well as shaving down my chin, jawline, and cheeks — I could offset my shortfalls.

After about five hours under general anesthesia, three months of recovery, and $18,500 (including a 10% bulk discount kindly offered to me), I could emerge with what Serena said would be "brighter," wider, and bigger eyes; a nose with a high bridge not generally naturally found on Korean faces; a "slimmer," highly contoured face through bone reconstruction surgery on my chin, jaw, and cheeks. In other words, I could achieve what my friends call K-face.

Instagram face — featuring a sun-kissed complexion, big, bold brows and eyes, plumped-up lips, a pert nose, and high, contoured cheekbones — is generally considered the prevailing, social media-driven beauty standard of the Western world. But in Seoul, and now in cities across the continent, the modern beauty standard is what sociologist Kimberly Kay Hoang has described as the "Pan-Asian ideal." Given the beauty ideal's similarities to other Korean exports like K-pop and K-drama, as well as its distinctly South Korean roots, I would argue that the pan-Asian ideal could be more accurately described as K-face. Broadly, that includes a wide, double-eyelid fold forming "almond eyes," a "Barbie nose," a V-shaped face, symmetrical features, and light, taut, glossy, ageless, and blemish-free skin.

But K-face isn't static. The ideal for Korean faces changes over time, and several archetypes of preferred aesthetics are available to choose from (including those oriented around a patient's age). Microtrends come and go, depending on which K-drama actor or K-pop idol is having a moment. These trends are propelled by plastic surgeons who double as TikTok and YouTube influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers, dissecting every centimeter of Korean celebrity faces and explaining — without evidence — the procedures they may have undergone, from blepharoplasty (to achieve bigger eyes) to buccal fat removal to gum recontouring.

Right now, these influencers say Jennie from the K-pop girlgroup Blackpink has one of the most sought-after faces. Her large eyes, narrow nostrils, and coy smile give her a textbook go-yang-i-sang — a "cat-like face." Other celebrities with go-yang-i-sang include the top female contestants on Netflix's Korean reality dating show "Single's Inferno," which features some of the most attractive bachelors and bachelorettes in the country, and has become a global hit. "Single's Inferno"-inspired makeup tutorials in English abound on YouTube; one from a Singaporean plastic surgeon suggests that one can look like Song Ji-Ah, one of the show's hottest stars, by surgical enhancements that help achieve the "golden ratio": a mathematical formula long-attributed as an indicator for beauty and balance.

While the cat-like face is having a moment, these influencers stress that other popular archetypes are vying for supremacy in Korea (and increasingly, China and Japan), including gang-a-ji-sang (dog-like face), bem-sang (snake-like face), or even gong-ryong-sang (dinosaur-like face). Keeping up with the Koreans is exhausting.

Still, I am obsessed with these videos. I feel relief at the mere speculation that celebrities have only achieved their near-perfect appearance through costly, invasive procedures. I then feel deflated at the realization that I will likely never achieve the same, despite being held to the same standard. There is no winning in a world that grades our appearance against an archetype that, for the most part, does not naturally occur among us, including among the main purveyors of K-face, Koreans ourselves.

The origin story of the now-famed double eyelid surgery — one of the hallmarks of K-face — illustrates both the impossibility and the fraught politics of this ideal. The procedure was popularized in the country by Dr. David Ralph Millard, an American military plastic surgeon stationed in the country during the Korean War. Millard was interested in cosmetic procedures that would "deorientalize" Koreans, especially Korean women and sex workers who hoped to appeal to and marry GIs, which would help them "blend with their surroundings" upon settlement in the States.

Today, K-face, like K-pop, K-drama, and K-beauty, is a cultural export riding hall-yu, or the wave of South Korean cultural influence throughout the globe. Medical tourists from all over make pilgrimages to Seoul in pursuit of K-face; South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare boasted in a press release last year that 606,000 foreign patients visited the country in 2023. About 17% came for plastic surgery procedures, mostly from Thailand, Japan, China, and the US. Yet plastic surgery tourism, and the beauty export industry at large, is not a demand-driven machine: It is the result of an intentional investment strategy by the Korean government. (A cottage industry of intermediaries, like medical tour guides and agents, is also flourishing.)

As Elise Hu details in her book "Flawless: Lessons from the K-Beauty Capital," after South Korea went bankrupt in 1997, the country sought to rebuild its economy in part on the strength of medical tourism and cultural exports. Then, as now, doctors and research labs were afforded billions in tax breaks and investments. In 2021, Korea's cultural exports made some $12.5 billion. The plastic surgery industry, as of 2023, was worth $1.7 billion.

The effectiveness of the global marketing campaign was on maximum display at the clinic I visited. In the waiting room, I spotted brochures for the clinic's offerings in Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, and English. Among Serena and her colleagues, there was at least one staffperson who could fluently speak each one of these languages. After itemizing the suite of surgeries I should consider pursuing, Serena told me that if I were to purchase them, I would have access to the clinic's benefits for medical tourists. I would be escorted to and from the airport for free and given a bed in their guest house for seven days during recovery. Immediately after my procedure, I would be given a bed in the clinic's inpatient facility, with a nurse available to tend to me 24/7. I could also receive a tax refund of about 8% at the airport on my way out of the country.

The medical-aesthetic tourism boom, however, has also imposed serious burdens on Korea's labor market. Sparked by a series of tragic deaths caused by doctor shortages, interns, residents, and doctors at major hospitals have been on strike since last February. They are demanding better pay and benefits to compete with what doctors in the private beauty industry can earn, arguing the imbalance is what's led to the dearth of "essential" doctors in the country.

During my consultation, I had a creeping feeling that the pursuit of K-face would be an unending chase. I repeatedly told Serena that my primary area of concern was my nose. Serena kindly but firmly countered with her expert opinion: If I only lifted my nose, it would protrude inelegantly from the rest of my face. Her logic made perfect sense in the moment. My chin, Serena explained, needed to be elongated to improve the proportions of my face and match my new nose. Elongating my chin, however, would make my jawline look out of place. So I would need to shave it down to achieve the coveted V-line. There was a chance, Serena said, that my cheeks would then be too wide, in which case we could simply power drill down my cheekbones.

Before I left my consultation, Serena warned that I shouldn't take too long to decide. The older a person gets, she explained, the longer it takes for their skin and tissue to adapt to the changes. "Sometimes they don't follow 100%. Then there remains a little sagging." She concluded: "The sooner the better."

Serena was a supreme saleswoman. She merely needed to affirm old insecurities and introduce me to new ones. Now, dutifully, I affirm them to myself, without the need for prompting — not just about my facial deficiencies, but about aging as well. As Hu writes: "In showing and repeatedly setting examples of a standard Korean beauty ideal, media and marketing pushed an appearance regime that consumers learned to enforce on themselves." This is the secret of the business of Korea's "beauty belt."This is why so many Seoul clinics are willing to spend hours with prospective patients at no charge.

The labor and consumption required to approach the elusive K-face are never-ending. For someone like me, too lazy to even regularly get my hair cut, I contemplated getting an eyelash perm, Botox, and injections, all of which are temporary and would require upkeep in the US. Here, the same procedures cost three to five times as much as in Seoul, and practitioners are not guaranteed to be as well-trained or technologically up-to-date.

I continued to mull the prospect of plastic surgery, which seemed so easy, accessible, and rational in the clinic but felt grim and horrifying afterward. The clinic staff's opinions haunted me. Serena and the eye and nose surgeon thought that I needed a whole new face; my current one, the one I was born with and have lived with for 30 years, is uneven, distorted, and deficient. After the consultation, my boyfriend insisted to me, kindly but ineffectually, that I am "beautiful just the way I am."

During my trip to Seoul, I introduced him to my extended family for the first time. After lunch with my weh-sam-chon, my mother's brother, we took a photo together. Looking closely, I noticed that I share his and my mother's nose and cheeks; we all inherited these features from my hal-mo-ni, my grandmother who raised me and died two years ago. During dinner with my long-deceased father's siblings and their children, my boyfriend observed that my eyes resemble those of my aunties.

It's always emotional to see my dad's side of the family. When they look at me, I feel certain that they see my father. This used to bother me — as though I was invisible to them. Yet reflecting on my inherited features, I realize there is beauty in living on as the extension of my grandmother and father's image. My face marks my belonging in the family; my features celebrate and connect me to those who came before me. This is the only way I am tethered to them, those deceased and surviving. If I lifted my nose bridge, widened my eyes, shaved my jaw, and hollowed out my cheeks, I might become more like Jennie or Song Ji Ah. I might achieve some semblance of K-face.

But I would lose any resemblance to those I love. Having lost so much family at a young age, and now at risk of losing my mother to cancer, I find myself wanting to preserve any ties to my loved ones, present and foregone.

Alarmed by the bruised lady in the waiting room, along with a desire to be in solidarity with feminists (a kiss-of-death descriptor for women in Korea), and to hold my mother, father, and grandmother close, I left Korea with the same face that I entered.

These feelings do not totally negate my aspirations to K-face. After my consultation, I looked in the mirror, and thanks to Serena, I saw my mismatched eyes (my right one too small, angled too high), my stubby chin, my wide face, and my thick nose tip. I saw short, straight eyelashes, blackheads, and flaking skin. I did not attempt to correct for these inadequacies this time around, too lazy for the more accessible procedures, and too scared of the more invasive ones.

I set out to Seoul in pursuit of K-face. I ended up finding my own: in the faces of my family, of both those departed and remaining. But when I return to Korea, likely years from now and well into my 30s, I may have a change of heart. For K-face and Instagram face are not mere cultural phenomena — they are industrial behemoths with massive marketing budgets and world-class entertainment apparatuses to disseminate their images and prey on our insecurities. I have experienced firsthand the pull of the well-oiled K-face machine, and I maintain no illusion that I uniquely possess an ability to resist.

Jane Chung is a writer living in Brooklyn.

Business Insider's Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day's most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.

Most popular