AsiaNews Magazine Jan10-16,2014 ( Jan 1-7,2014) | Page 69

COVER STORY

January 10-16, 2014

My visit to a
Korean plastic
surgeon
CHEONG POH KWAN
The Straits Times
Singapore

W

hen Dr Shim suddenly
moved a shiny metal
stick towards my left eye,
I was too stunned to pull
back. I feared he was going to
make a cut right there and then.
After all, I had just asked for
the cost of double-eyelid surgery, and he could see I was
agreeable to his 1.5 million won
(US$1,417) price quote.
Thankfully, my concerns about
that metal object aimed at my
eye were unfounded. He just
used it to create a temporary
fold. Then he told me to open
and shut my eyes a few more
times as he repeated the same
move before he declared: “Ok,
this is optimal.”
That was how I learnt that
the natural crease on my eyelids should ideally be a few more
milimetres from my lash lines.
He also suggested that I get an
epicanthoplasty—a procedure to

have the tiny skin folds covering
the inner corners of one’s eyes removed—for another 500,000 won
($472). That, he said, would give
me bigger, wider eyes that appear
less spaced apart.
This spontaneous consultation
—my first with a plastic surgeon
—was at one of the hundreds of
plastic surgery clinics along Apgujeong-dong, the world-famous
beauty belt in Seoul’s upscale
Gangnam district, yes, the one immortalised in a certain Psy song.
Think Singapore’s Orchard
Road or New York’s Fifth Avenue. But instead of shopping
malls, this beauty belt is flanked
by long stretches of hospital
complexes, many plastered with
signs indicating what they could
“fix”—from unflattering chest
sizes to lantern jaws, short limbs
and stubby clubbed thumbs, a
genetic anomaly made famous by
American celebrity Megan Fox.