AsiaNews Magazine Jan10-16,2014 ( Jan 1-7,2014) | Página 72

COVER STORY

January 10-16, 2014

The sheer number of options
is a sure sign of the ballooning demand for surgery-assisted
vanity fixes in the Hallyu land.
Bloomberg named South Korea
the country with the highest rate
of cosmetic surgery, with 13.3 procedures performed for every 1,000
people in 2011.
The number of tourists who visited the country for cosmetic surgery also jumped more than fivefold between 2009 and 2012. The
upward trend will likely persist, as
the South Korean government has
been pulling out all the stops to
woo medical tourists with promises of quality care, interpreting service and strict industry regulation.
So when I was right there in the
heart of the world’s cosmetic surgery capital—where only the top
one per cent of its medical cohort
could vie for a place in this lucra-

tive field—I decided that I had to
see some of its offerings.
My travel mates and I then
picked a building and went
straight to its top floor before
coming down level by level.
Each time our lift door opened,
we were greeted with a standee.
On display was either a perfectly
crafted face, or an unbelievably
gravity-defying bum. Some clinics have a posh, minimalist deco
with soft ambient light, others
are pretty much like Singapore’s
homely family clinics.
In one clinic, I walked to the
registration counter and asked for
the price list. Four sweet-faced ladies were standing by, so I figured
the chances of one of them speaking English should be high.
None could, though, but one
quickly put me on the phone
with the clinic’s English-speak-

ing agent. Interestingly, the first
thing the man, named Jin, asked
was: “Do you speak Bahasa?”
I guess he’s been seeing many
Indonesian clients. “You like
Korean actress right?” I said
yes. Although I have not been
following K-dramas and K-pop
groups closely, I remember how
implausibly gorgeous Kim Ah
Joong was in 200 Pounds Beauty,
a 2006 film on plastic surgery’s
life-changing potential.
Next, Jin told me it’s “very
cheap” to get things done in this
particular clinic, but the result is
“not so good”. Instead, he could
recommend the “best surgeons,
the ones that the stars go to”.
Then he asked for my hotel and
email address. But the moment I
uttered “gmail.com”, the very sharp
receptionist knew the agent was
not helping her, so she nudged me