2 pages of this essay. 

MLA Format.  Times New Roman, pt. 12, the margins are 1-inch, the paper is double-spaced, and that you include a Works Cited page at the end (the Works Cited page does not count for your 2-page count). Make sure to cite quotes you use in your paper i.e. for MLA format.

1-page summarizing one of the readings. These summaries should demonstrate that you comprehend the main points of the articles.

1-page of your critical reaction towards the reading. You can critique and/or expand on ideas by connecting it to current events or personal experiences.

page. 147

Cosmetic Surgery in Contemporary Korean Art

醫美世代與韓國當代藝術

Cosmetic Surgery in Contemporary Korean Art*

醫美世代與韓國當代藝術

SooJin Lee

李秀䛆

Assistant Professor, Liberal Arts, Hongik University (Sejong Carmpus), South Korea
南韓弘益大學（世宗校區）文學院助理教授

* !is paper is a revised version of a paper I presented at the AAS(Association of Asian Studies)-in-ASIA conference at Academia
Sinica in Taipei, June 22–24, 2015.
本文改編自筆者於 2015年6月22-24日中央研究院與亞洲研究學會 (Association of Asian Studies) 在臺北共同舉辦「AAS-
in-Asia大會」研討會上所發表之論文。

現代美術學報—31
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當代藝術與媒體文化

Abstract

This essay examines how South Korea’s conspicuous cosmetic-surgery culture is represented
and critiqued in visual works by young Korean artists. In particular, I pay attention to the
recent works by Mind C (Kang Min Gu), Kim Tae Yeon, and Ji Yeo (Yeo Ji Hyeon), widely
circulated online and attracting much viewership, but which have not received much in the
way of critical evaluation or in-depth examination. Based on a close analysis of the images,
I argue that they raise some important and complex issues with respect to cosmetic surgery
and beaut y culture that have previously been under-discussed in popular culture, such as
gender stereotype, side effects, and the pain and desire involved in extreme makeovers, and
the changing aesthetics and ethics of contemporary South Korea. For comparison, I will first
review pop-culture representations of cosmetic surgery before discussing the artworks under
consideration. My analysis of the artworks will highlight the role of artists as cultural critics,
but it will a lso suggest that the art work s are products of the culture, and parta ke in the
production of the growing discourse on South Korea’s expanding cosmetic surgery culture and
industry. Both scholarly and journalistic writings on South Korea’s cosmetic surgery practice
and culture will be used in this analysis.

—

Keywords: cosmetic surgery in contemporary art, cosmetic surgery, Korean art, Internet

culture, beauty culture, Mind C, Kim Tae Yeon, Ji Yeo, gender, representation

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Cosmetic Surgery in Contemporary Korean Art
醫美世代與韓國當代藝術

摘要

本文探討年輕一代的韓國藝術家如何在作品中呈現、批判韓國眾所皆知的整形文化。特別

是Mind C、金泰延，以及呂至這三位藝術家，他們近期的作品雖然在網路上廣為流傳，也
吸引了不少觀眾點閱，但尚未得到評論界較具深度的回應與關注。經過仔細的分析，我認

為這些圖像帶出了一些重要而複雜的議題，觸及流行文化裡一直未曾正視的醫美觀點，諸

如性別刻板印象、手術副作用、改頭換面的過程中所經歷的疼痛與投射的慾望，以及今日

不斷演變的南韓美學和倫理。為了便於比較，我將先從流行文化中的整容典型切入，接著

再針對本文提到的作品進行討論。分析的角度除了將藝術家視為文化評論者以外，同時也

將其作品視為整形文化的產物，成為南韓日益熱門的醫美話題之一。文章內容將引用南韓

整形手術與文化的相關論述與期刊報導。

—

關鍵字： 當代藝術裡的整形文化、整形手術、韓國藝術、網路文化、美容文化、Mind C、金
泰延、呂至、性別、形象

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Preface

It is no secret that South Korea is “the world capital of plastic surgery,” as recently

headlined in the New Yorker magazine (Marx). According to statistics revealed last July by

the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), over 20 million cosmetic

procedures were performed worldwide in 2014, and about a million of them were done

in South Korea (Korea hereafter), making it the country with the world’s highest rate of

plastic surgery per capita. In fact, in Korea today, cosmetic treatments and procedures

are popular and broadly sought after, and the ubiquity has created such neologisms as

seonghyeong munhwa (“cosmetic-surgery culture”), seonghyeong miyin (“cosmetic-surgery

beauty”), and seonghyeong gwemul (“cosmetic-surgery monster”). Especially in Gangnam,

the commercial center of Seoul, advertisements for cosmetic clinics and surgeries fill the

walls of subway cars and underground stations and it is not surprising to run into women

with their faces wrapped in bandages striding down the streets.

This essay examines how Korea’s conspicuous cosmetic-surgery culture is represented

and critiqued in contemporary mass culture and in works by young Korean artists. In

particular, I focus on recent artworks by Mind C (Kang Min Gu), Kim Tae Yeon, and

Ji Yeo (Yeo Ji Hyeon), as they have been widely circulated online and attracted many

viewers without receiving much in the way of critical evaluation or in-depth examination.

Based on a close ana lysis of the images, I argue that they raise some important and

complex issues with cosmetic surgery and beauty culture, previously under-discussed in

popular culture, such as gender stereotype, side effects, and the pain and desire involved

in extreme makeovers, and the changing aesthetics and ethics of contemporary Korea.

For comparison, I will first review pop-culture representations of cosmetic surgery before

discussing the artworks under consideration. My analysis of these artworks will highlight

the role of artists as cultural critics, but will also suggest that the artworks are products of

the culture and partake in the production of the growing discourse on Korea’s expanding

cosmetic surgery culture and industry.

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Methodology

This paper seeks to contribute to — and draw from—the growing scholarship on

cosmetic surger y by adopting a n a rt historica l methodolog y of visua l a na lysis. This

analysis relies on a close viewing of the images, in addition to using both scholarly and

journa listic writings on Korea’s cosmetic surger y practices and culture. Below I will

demonstrate that careful and attentive observation can reveal more about the image or the

object than would appear to be the case. It can be a “productive process” and a “skill for

the understanding and interpretation of the historical world,” especially for researchers

in art history and visual studies (Roberts). My interpretations and arguments concerning

the artworks under consideration and their links to various social and cultural issues such

as gender, gaze, and stereotypes are derived from my close, detailed observations of the

artworks.

Cosmetic Surgery in Korea

Korea’s cosmetic surgery industry began to grow quickly in the 1990s, the decade

during which Korea’s commercial culture diversif ied and consumer culture expanded

based on the rapid industrialization of the society during the 1980s. The Korean Medical

Association’s statistics show that the number of certified plastic surgeons increased from

398 in 1992 to 926 in 2000 (Woo, KJ 61). In 2014, it is estimated that 2,054 plastic

surgeons were practicing in Korea, ranking the sixth worldwide in absolute numbers after

the U.S. (6,300), Brazil (5,473), China (2,800), Japan (2,221), and India (2,150), but first

overall in terms of plastic surgeons per capita (ISAPS). Korea’s cosmetic surgery industry

continues to f lourish, especially with the increasing number of “medical tourists” from

China and Russia who travel to Seoul to consult plastic surgeons in Gangnam. Since the

Ministry of Health and Welfare granted local clinics official permission to receive foreign

patients in 2009, the number of medical tourists has continued to swell year on year—

from 60,201 in 2009 to 159,464 in 2012, and 266,501 in 2014 (Hong). Korea’s medical

tourism industry tripled in revenue from 2009 through 2012, rising to 453 million US

dollars (Lee). The government is actively promoting the industr y, contributing to the

increase in employment in the field by several thousands of jobs.

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Cosmetic surgery is indeed highly conspicuous in Korean culture and society today.

It is a common subject in everyday conversations in Korea, regardless of gender, age, or

class, and advertisements for various cosmetic clinics and procedures are ubiquitous in

public transport. One factor contributing to the popularity of Korean cosmetic surgery is

said to be its relatively ‘cheap’ price: “An average—not excellent—face-lift in the United

States will set you back about US$10,000. But in Korea you can get the same service for

US$2,000 or US$3,000” (Kim, V).

What has been often described as Korea’s ‘obsession with cosmetic surgery’ in the

international media routinely refers to the above-quoted ISAPS data, which shows that

in recent years Korea has had the world’s highest rate of cosmetic procedures per capita.

However, the actual figures are likely much higher than recorded, as the Korean studies

scholar Joanna Elfving-Hwang has noted elsewhere:

[A] signi”cant number of surgeries go unrecorded: not only is the cosmetic surgery

industry badly regulated but the clinical data included in the ISAP’s figures only

takes into account surgeries performed by accredited surgeons who form a minority

of medical or medical-related sta# who perform surgeries. Many beauty salons and

‘health clinics’ o#er smaller cosmetic procedures such as facial “llers (e.g. Botox® or

Retylin®), blepharoplasty and mole removal laser surgery, which are not recorded as

surgical procedures (Elfving-Hwang n.p.).

In fact, other sources estimate higher rates. The New York Times reported that in 2009

alone, about 30 percent of women in Korea between the ages of 20 and 50 underwent

some form of cosmetic treatment (Fack ler). According to the Korean A ssociation for

Plastic Surgeons, in 2010, about 15 percent of men in Korea underwent cosmetic surgery

(Holliday and Elfving-Hwang 59).

An important thing to keep in mind when speaking of Korea’s cosmetic surgery is

that in vernacular Korean language, ‘cosmetic surgery’ does not necessarily distinguish

bet ween nonsurgical treatments and procedures. The Korean expression seonghyeong (

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醫美世代與韓國當代藝術

성형ĭġㆸ⼊), which is derived from such terms as seonghyeong susul (“plastic surger y”)

and seonghyeong wegwa (“plastic surgery clinic”), is used often and widely to refer to a

range of beauty-related treatments, from light cosmetic procedures (시술, 㕥埻) to more

dramatic surgeries (수술,ġㇳ埻). The above-quoted ISA PS sur veys show that the total

number of procedures performed in Korea in 2014 was 980,313, and that 55 percent

of t hese (539,730) were non-surgic a l procedures. Not just cosmetic surger y clinic s,

but dermatologists and other beaut y-related procedures and products are fairly easily

accessible in Korea. Anecdotally, I can attest to the availability and popularity of such

procedures and products based on my experience living in both Korea and the U.S.: I

will try to see a dermatologist or have a facial treatment once a month in Seoul, which I

never did in twenty years while living in the U.S. This is not to suggest that the reported

rate of cosmetic surgery in Korea is wrong, but only that seonghyeong is a prevalent and

conspicuous aspect of Korean culture. Public awareness of—and interest in—seonghyeong,

beauty and grooming is generally high and commonplace in Korea.

Representation of Cosmetic Surgery in Korean Mass
Culture

Cosmetic surgery emerged as a new, popular topic in Korean mass culture in the

2000s. In pa rticula r, the idea of complete facIa l ma keover appeared prominently in

several movies and television series—a trend possibly inspired by the international hit

Holly wood movie Face/Of f (1997), the plot of which evolves around an FBI agent and

his terrorist enemy, each of whom undergoes a face transplant procedure to take on the

other’s identity. In Shiri (1999), the first big-budget “blockbuster” movie made in South

Korea, the main character is a North Korean female spy sent to South Korea after having

a complete face transplant; she assumes the identity of an existing South Korean woman

as part of the preparation for her missions in Seoul.

In 2006, there were three movies that took cosmetic surger y as a main narrative

device, indicating the growing interest in seonghyeong in Korea at the time. It would be

helpful here to look at how these movies portrayed the idea of plastic surgery, for they

ref lect a change of public opinion and attitude toward cosmetic surgery. First, a summer

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當代藝術與媒體文化

thriller released in August, Cinderella (신데렐라) tells a gruesome stor y of Yunhee, a

plastic surgeon, and her seventeen-year-old daughter Hyunsu. The movie begins with

high school girls suffering from hallucinations and dying after having Yunhee perform

cosmetic surgery on them. Hyunsu discovers in the basement photos of a girl whose face

has been terribly disf igured, becomes curious, and investigates a secret her mother has

kept in the dark basement for years. Second, there is Time (시간), directed by Kim Ki-

duk, a f ilmmaker with an international cult following, and also released in August, a

week after Cinderella’s release. The movie’s main character is Sehee, a young woman who

undergoes drastic cosmetic surgery to become a new person in order to win back the heart

of her boyfriend, Jiwoo, who seems to be losing interest in her after two years of dating.

After the transformation, Sehee, now with a totally new face, approaches and starts dating

Jiwoo, who is unaware that this woman is Sehee. As Jiwoo shows a romantic interest in

the ‘new’ Sehee, she finds that she is still unhappy; does this mean he has moved on from

his ex-girlfriend and the ‘real’ Sehee?

Revie w ing t hese movies in a ne wspaper a r ticle tit led “On Cellu loid, Pla stic is

Murder,” Joo Jung-wan points out that “There are no good points to plastic surgery in the

movies; it is uniformly seen as unnatural and undesirable.”

In the movie Time, the plastic surgeon warns the female character that she should

be aware of the fact that once she goes through with the operation, she will never be

able to go back to what she used to look like. Despite the doctor’s warning, [Sehee]

insists on going through the operation Ⱥ and regrets it. The movie Cinderella

reminds people of the serious dangers plastic surgery carries. It shows eerie scenes of

girls lying alone in the operating room, nervously waiting for the doctor to come in.

It also depicts the gruesome results of the mother’s quest to make her daughter the

“prettiest girl in the world” (Joo).

W hile these were the f irst Korean movies to delve deeply into the issue of cosmetic

surgery, they portrayed cosmetic surgery as a questionable and problematic practice.

In contrast, the third movie released in 2006 to deal with cosmetic surger y, 200

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Pounds Beauty (미녀는 괴로워) took a positive take on life-threatening surgeries. In the

story, based on Yumiko Suzuki’s manga Kanna-san, Daiseikou Desu, the main character

is Hanna, an unknown, overweight female singer who undergoes plastic surgery in order

to become a pop star. Hanna is an excellent singer, but her talent is not acknowledged

because of her unattractive appea ra nce; a nd so, she acts a s a ‘ghost singer’, singing

backstage for A mi, a famous performer who actually lip syncs to Hanna’s voice. A fter

experiencing a series of rejections and failures in her career and love life, she decides to

go under the knife to gain confidence and opportunities for a happier life. After a year

secluded in a hospital, she returns to show business as the stunningly beautiful Jenny,

and soon earns a solo-album recording contract from Sangjun—A mi’s agency director

and Hanna’s long-term crush—who does not learn that she is Hanna until later. They

become romantically involved while working together, and Sangjun learns that Jenny is

Hanna when looking at her drawing, which he recalls from earlier—giving a hint that he

had been impressed with Hanna’s innocent nature and cute personality. Jenny becomes

famous, but struggles with the guilt of having lied about herself. Finally, during a concert,

she reveals her past career and surgeries to the public. In tears, she declares ‘Jenny’ to

be “fake” and that the fat woman singing in the video is her “real” self. Following her

confession, she releases her f irst a lbum using her rea l name, Hanna, and gains both

commercial and critical acclaim.

Though the 200 Pounds Beauty was promoted as a “satire of lookism” (“외모지상

주의 풍자”), there were some aspects in the movie that glamorized high-risk cosmetic

surger y. In t he t wo-hour movie, in which t he ma in cha racter’s complete ma keover

provides the turning point, only f ive seconds are spent showing what happens inside

the operating room, with the camera focused on the surgeon and rows of bottles of fat

suctioned from the patient–the patient’s face and body are not shown. Another ninety

seconds are spent showing what happens during her recovery period; Hanna, now skinny,

jogs on a running machine and visits her father with her face wrapped in bandages, while

Ami’s agency desperately searches for her to again ghost-sing for Ami. In brief, there is no

realistic or serious depiction of the life-threatening plastic surgeries that Hanna is said to

have undergone in the movie. Instead, the surgeries are presented as life-changing ‘gifts’,

through which Hanna achieves success both in her singing career and romantic relations.

現代美術學報—31
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當代藝術與媒體文化

The movie went on to become the most successful romantic comedy in the 2000s, not

only in Korea but also in China.

Joanna Elf ving-Hwang, a scholar of Korean culture and the makeover culture, has

pointed out “the fact that cosmetic surgery is, by and large, represented either positively

or neutrally in South Korean popular culture and media.” She has analyzed closely the

narrative of the popular makeover reality T V show Let Me In (2011-present) to argue

that Korean popular media utilizes “a set of mora l discourses of self-discipline, and

even filial piety, to justif y the presumed necessity for radical corporeal changes. These

discourses coalesce to promote the practice not as an instance of vanity, but as evidence

of moral f ibre and responsibility that one ‘owes’ not only to oneself, but also to one’s

parents or children as an expression of filial piety or parental duty” (n.p.). For example,

each episode of Let Me In begins with a section in which contestants or surgery hopefuls,

mostly working-class young women, seek to convince the show hosts and the group of

medical and beauty specialists of their ‘need’ to receive life-changing surgeries, typically

by explaining about their ‘tragic’ life affected by their ‘ugly’ appearance, coupled with ‘low’

class background—thus framing them as ‘cosmetic underclass’ (miyong hawui g yegep)

who are unable to achieve success because of their appearance (Seo 20). This section

accompanies videos in which the cameras follow the contestants’ everyday lives, isolated

from others and/or negatively affected by their low self-esteem. Typically, in these videos,

family members “reinforce and legitimate the discourse of exclusion based on appearance”

(Elf ving-Hwang). For example, the parents are shown to apologize to their children for

passing on ‘faulty’ genes and lacking the funds to ‘f ix’ these ‘faults’ through surger y.

In such ways, the narratives on cosmetic surgery circulating in Korean popular media

appear to combine Confucian discourses of filial piety and self-discipline with neoliberal

discourses of self-improvement and class mobility.

Cosmetic Surgery in Contemporary Korean Art

In the Korean art world, cosmetic surgery is a new subject matter which began to

appear in the early 2000s, when the so-called “cosmetic-surger y culture” (seonghyeong

munhwa) bec a me conspicuou s a nd problematiz ed in Korea’s public opinion a nd in

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the international media. It should be remembered though that cosmetic surgery is not

completely new in art, however. Andy Warhol, the leading American Pop artist in the

1960s, whose art was all about his (and his culture’s) fascination with the world of images

a nd consumer culture, created dif ferent versions of pa inting titled Before and Af ter,

around the same time he got his own nose job done. They are large, identical black-and-

white paintings made based on a small newspaper advertisement for a plastic surgeon in

New York City in 1961, showing a woman’s profile ‘before’ and ‘after’ getting (evidently)

a nose job, a chiloplasty, and having a mole removed. In art history, the artist most closely

associated with plastic surger y is the notorious French performance artist Orlan, who

underwent a series of surgeries throughout the 1990s to change her face to look like the

female personae from famous paintings such as Venus and Mona Lisa, and later to implant

features of ancient masks from Columbia, India, and A frica. Intended as performative

critique of male-centric and Euro-centric ideals of beauty, Orlan’s transformations have

also been understood as a manifestation of a postmodern understanding of identity as

mutable and reproducible.

W hile cosmetic surger y tends to be portrayed positively or neutra lly in popular

media as discussed earlier, artists have more critically engaged with the beauty-obsessed

culture, of ten representing or performing portraya ls of cosmetic surger y with irony.

Recently, young Korean artists joined that strand of artist-critics, with their visual works

commenting on Korea’s seonghyeong munhwa going viral and receiving acclaim for unique

and trenchant portrayal of the culture and the subjects. A s I will discuss below, their

work s a lso address and revea l problems of gender, mora lit y, and stereot ypes that are

specific to contemporary Korean culture and society.

Case 1: Mind C’s Gangnam Beauty is Plastic Beauty/
Monster

When the webcomic artist Mind C (Kang Min Gu)’s illustrations titled Gangnam

Beauty went vira l in 2013, viewers were impressed with the piqua nt humor a nd the

keen observation and skills with which the typical face of seonghyeong mi-in or Korean

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“plastic beauty” was depicted.1 In the illustration series, the three or four different female

characters look identical, obviously because their faces were shaped by the same clinic

in Gangnam, “Gangnamkong Plastic Surgery Clinic, Specialty in Faceoff,” as a sign in

one of the illustrations indicates. Like dolls mass-produced in a factory, the women have

the exact same facial features. They have the same set of eyes, showing visible signs of

double eyelid surgery and epicanthoplasty (which cuts the inner corners of the eyes to

extend the length of the eyes), as well as the so-called “charming fat” injection beneath

the eyes (which is done to add a cuter and younger look like the eyes of a doll or a baby).

The women a lso have identica l-look ing noses, which a re the exact sa me leng th a nd

shape, with the exact same size and position of the nostrils. Furthermore, jaw reduction

and cheekbone reduction surgeries, which remove portions of bone, have created the

unrealistic V-shaped face. In addition, their protruding foreheads are effects of round

silicon impla nts. Unfortunately, however, because of a ll the surgeries, t hese women

cannot put on a smile on their face. They have the blank face of a doll or a robot. Making

it even more eerie is that Mind C’s depictions of plastic beauty are not caricatures, for one

can actually run into people bearing similar faces while walking through the Gangnam

shopping district. It was this surreal ‘reality’ aesthetic in Mind C’s work that grabbed

people’s attention when it first came out.

However, I would like to highlight some problems with gender and race in this

webcom ic serie s, wh ich have so fa r e sc aped crit ique. W h i le Mind C rid icu le s a nd

objectif ies his fema le cha racters a s seonghyeong gwemul (“pla stic surger y monsters”)

rather than seonghyeong mi-in (“plastic surger y beaut y”), the single subject of gaze in

the illustrations is a Caucasian man dressed in a suit, who is depicted as staring with

confusion at the identical-looking Korean women on the street. Evidently, in order to

poke fun at the excessive cosmetic-surger y culture of Korea and its ‘blind ’ consumers

who a re most ly fema le, Mind C ta kes t he old, pre-feminist a nd colonia list way of

representation in which the principal agent of looking is a Western man (Mulvey). By

doing so, Mind C positions himself apart from the Korean cosmetic-surgery culture that

he seeks to criticize, and alienates his female characters from Korean men like himself.

1　!e illustrations started in 2012 Mind C’s webcomic series 2-chawon gaegeu (“2-dimensional gag”).

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In this respect, Mind C’s Gangnam Beauty illustrations can be related to the “kimchi

girl hate” misogyny that is deeply rooted and seriously prominent in the Internet culture

today in Korea. “K imchi girl ” (김치녀) and “dwenjang girl ” (된장녀) are neologisms

in the 2000s that describe young women obsessed with shopping and luxur y lifest yle

that they cannot afford, and have been adopted by young men to attack such women

and the excessive consumerism. In fact, in many misogynistic writings in Korean online

space, luxury brand accessories like the Chanel handbag and shoes that Mind C’s female

characters are f launting are symbols of “kimchi girl.” Considering Mind C’s allusions

to “kimchi girl,” it might be proper to say that the target of Mind C’s satire is less the

cosmetic-surgery culture and more the ostentatious and hyperreal culture obsessed with

appearance only.2 As his illustrations concentrate on depicting only women as “plastic

surgery monsters”, and since the only male character—and the single subject of gaze—

featured in the illustrations is a Caucasian man, Mind C cannot escape criticisms for

reproducing the colonialist gaze and the imperialistic gender and racial stereotypes, which

prominent postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak

have discussed. If Mind C did so unconsciously, which seems to be case here, that would

be another example of contemporary traces and effects of Western imperialism, which

remain “so global and all-encompassing that virtually nothing escaped it” (Said 68). It

hints at the sense of cultural inferiority that remains in contemporary Korea despite the

economic growth and the development of a cosmopolitan culture about which the country

often boasts.

Case 2: Kim Tae Yeon’s New ‘Landscape’ of Korea in 唯
美獨尊圖

In the spring of 2014, Kim Tae Yeon, a recent MFA from Seoul National University,

received considerable media attention after opening her solo show in Seoul titled 유미

독존도 (ⓗ伶䌐⮲⚾), which can be translated as “a painting that describes the current

phenomenon in which people believe beauty is the most important thing in the world”

2　As of this writing in November 2015, Mind C’s latest work is Will You Marry Me?, a cute and quirky romantic comedy based on his real life
love story with his wife.

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當代藝術與媒體文化

(Choi).3 The show consisted of her series of paintings dea ling with the Korean issue

of cosmetic surger y. K im, who studied Orienta l Pa inting at the universit y, employs

traditional convention of Buddhist painting to critique Korea’s cosmetic surgery ‘craze’

and the industry.

The title of the exhibition is actually the title of one of her paintings exhibited there.

In the silk scroll painting titled 유미독존도 (ⓗ伶䌐⮲⚾), with its English title being

Righteously Gorgeous, Kim presents a plastic surgery clinic as a paradise in which one gains

reincarnation (Fig. 1). The plastic surgeon is portrayed as the godly Buddha. The lone

woman struggling with her appearance in the bottom of the composition, gains a new

body on the operating table situated in the painting’s middle ground, and is depicted to

live a new, happy life after the makeover: she receives a marriage proposal and f lies off on

a honeymoon. The “three goddesses” of plastic surgery beauty (who have identical faces

3　!e solo exhibition took place at Gallery DOS in Seoul, from April 30 to May 6, 2014

Fig. 1 K IM Tae Yeon. Righteously Gorgeous (유미독존도), 2014.
Pigment on silk, 76.5×120 cm. Courtesy of artist

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like the women in Mind C’s illustrations) are praying for the woman’s “eternal youth and

immortality” and “infinite potentials” after the surgical rebirth.

The triple goddesses frequently appear throughout the series, always positioned in

the upper or center area of the composition, because, for the surgery hopefuls, those who

have successfully obtained a new identity through plastic surgery are the surgeons deified.

In the painting Three Goddesses of Beauty, each of the three ethereal figures are backed

by a mandala and they together form the surgeon’s brain (Fig. 2). In traditional Buddhist

art, manda la is supposed to represent virtues of the universe, but in K im’s painting,

mandala shows the surgical goddesses’ painful recovery process from the surgeries. The

foreground of the painting presents a ceremonial setup, giving rite to the three goddesses’

previous faces, as well as their diplomats and awards. Here, physical beauty is exalted over

education and career accomplishments.

Kim’s paintings smartly address the recent change in Korean society of moral values

about one’s heritage and identity by merging the conventional Joseon Buddhist art with

the contemporary issue of cosmetic plastic surgery. One of Kim’s humorous titles is My

Parents Birthed Me and My Doctor Made Me —a satirical twist of an ancient Confucian

ode that goes, “My Father Birthed Me and My Mother Raised Me” (父生我身 母鞠我

身). Long gone are the Confucian principles of f ilial piety that used to teach Koreans

that one’s body is an important inheritance from the ancestors that must be kept clean

and unharmed. The complex mix of Confucian and neoliberal discourses of filial piety,

pa renta l dut y, self-discipline, self-improvement, a nd cla ss mobilit y in contempora r y

Korea’s cosmetic-surger y culture ha s a lready been discussed above in rega rds to the

popular TV show Let Me In. The phrase “My Parents Birthed Me and My Doctor Made

Me” perfectly renders going-under-the-knife as the new virtue. It is not your parents but

cosmetic surgeons who can “ma ke” you—who can give you what you need for life —

the man-made face and body that are believed to make your life ‘better.’ In twenty-first-

century Korea, the Confucian idea of self-discipline is confused with the neoliberal idea

of self-improvement, and physical beauty is a form of capital that one can purchase, own,

and exploit. In her artist’s statement, Kim asks , “Since when did it become so natural to

change one’s inborn face following some impossible standards?” (Kim, T).

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It should be pointed out that Kim is not entirely critical of the ‘cosmetic surgery’

syndrome in Korea. Her paintings of surgery patients and their transformations suggest

her understanding of their desire for a ‘better self ’ and a ‘better life’ in the changed

Korean society where appearance is directly linked to success. In almost every painting

of the series, t he viewer ca n f ind a fema le f ig ure that expresses her ea rnest wish or

desperation to receive cosmetic surgery. In the painting Goddess (관능보살도), the tiny

figure of a surgery hopeful is depicted as praying on her knees to the giant, glamorous

goddess f igure. In the lower left corner of the Righteously Gorgeous, the protagonist is

shown crying, with her hands covering her face from the surrounding eyes and mouths

staring at her. The dismembered eyes and mouths represent gazes of anonymous others—

the society where lookism rules, where job applications require the applicants’ pictures,

Fig. 2 K IM Tae Yeon. Three Goddesses (세여신도), 2014.
Pigment on silk. 81x143cm. Courtesy of artist

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where moms give their daughters a double eyelid surger y a s a ‘gif t’ upon entering a

university. Unlike Mind C, Kim does not blame or mock the surgery beauties or hopefuls.

She rather satirically portrays plastic surgery clinics as a microcosm of the current Korean

society ridiculously obsessed with physical beauty and material success.

Case 3: Ji Yeo’s Empathetic Portraits in Beauty Recovery
Room

The New York-based Korean photographer Ji Yeo (Yeo Ji Hyeon) takes her camera

inside Gangnam’s cosmetic surgery facilities. In 2008, Yeo began to take photographs for

her Beauty Recovery Room series, which presents portraits of patients in recovery rooms

waiting to heal (Figs. 3-5). In her recent interview with the Washington Post, the artist

said that she first became interested in the subject as she considered plastic surgery for

herself. “She planned to transform her whole body, but when she started consultations

with about a dozen doctors, she realized she had pictured plastic surgery in terms of the

before and after, not the actual surgery in the middle” (Swanson). Yeo says, “During the

consultation, I realized that all along, I was only thinking of plastic surgery as some kind

of magic tool. From the media, and from my friends, not many people were talking about

how plastic surgery was surgery” (Swanson). That is why she decided not to go under the

knife, and why she decided to take photographs of patients in recovery rooms—to reveal

the entire journey of cosmetic surgery.

The photographs of women (a nd a ma n) enduring post-surger y procedures a nd

suffering all alone in the luxury hospital rooms express many complex feelings, including

pain, loneliness, strength, vanity, and hope. There are no signs of fear or distress, however.

Neither sadness nor happiness. In these very intimate photos of women in blood, scars,

and bandage, one can clearly sense the photographer’s empathy with her subjects. Being a

young woman who grew up in Gangnam and who once considered plastic surgery herself,

Yeo evokes a deeply persona l and complicated relationship with cosmetic surger y. In

her official artist’s statement, she blames Korean society and culture for the high rate of

extreme makeovers among Korean women. She describes her work as her attempt to “show

the physical cost of adhering to social pressure in Korea,” in which “The male-dominated

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當代藝術與媒體文化

Figs. 3-5 Photographs from Ji Yeo’s Beauty Recovery Room series. Courtesy of artist

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media end lessly reinforces its model of the idea l women” ( Yeo). The photographer’s

subjects are mostly female, except one photograph of a young man.

It is interesting that Yeo comments on gender inequalit y in order to explain her

interest and to defend her subjects. Such an assumption, somewhat similar to the above

case of Mind C’s work, exemplifies the gender stereotype that dominates the discourses on

cosmetic surgery and the beauty culture. As Holliday and Elf ving-Hwang (62– 63) have

argued, “A number of studies have attempted to explain the high incidence of aesthetic

surgery in Korea by emphasizing ‘traditional’ patriarchal culture,” and “there is general

agreement that aesthetic surgery exits within a misogynistic (beauty) culture, and only

really affects women, and exceptionally a small portion of deviant (feminized) men.” The

examples she refers to are the feminist works of Kathy Davis and Kathryn Pauly Morgan.

However, statistic s prove t hat men’s interest in cosmetic surger y is increa sing,

a nd more men a re undergoing procedures a nd treatments. A sur vey a mong Korea n

university students in 2014 showed that 21.4% of the female respondents and 6.8% of

the male respondents said they would undergo plastic surgery in order to secure places

for themselves in the job market ( Jang; Jeffreys). As the Wall Street Journal has reported,

“In the past few years, a handful of men-only clinics have opened and existing clinics

have started in-house centers for male patients,” responding to growing demand from

men mostly for bigger eyes, nose jobs, and hair transplants (Woo, J). According to the

report, a survey done by a male-only clinic called Real for Men showed that the reasons

for the male patients to get cosmetic treatment were to improve competitiveness (33%),

confidence (27%), and personal satisfaction (24%) among others. The survey also showed

that 35% thought men’s appearance affects his success in society “greatly” and 53% “to

some extent.” These examples suggest that it is not Korea’s patriarchal culture that drives

women to go under the knife. After all, it is the same competitive society obsessed with

appearance that affects both men and woman to consider aesthetic surgery.

Concluding Remarks: Before and After

Over the last decade, cosmetic surgery has rapidly emerged as the most inf luential

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and popular constituent of Korean culture. Both the number of certified plastic surgeons

and clinics and the number of recorded procedures have continued to increase ever y

year. Surgery hopefuls are as ubiquitous as “surgery beauties,” “surgery monsters,” and

advertisements for cosmetic clinics and surgeries that are overf lowing onto the streets.

Now a five-billion-dollar industry, cosmetic surgery has become a popular, familiar and

common aspect of Korean culture, and this is too a serious and critical phenomenon to be

considered a passing trend (Wright). It is increasingly affecting the society’s aesthetics and

ethics, and the ways people see themselves, others, and the world.

Relatively many artists and cultural producers in Korea have dealt with the issue

of cosmetic surger y, ref lecting its extraordinar y popularity in the society. In no other

country has cosmetic surgery provoked so many stories and imaginative works in such

diverse forms and styles. As I demonstrated above, it was in the mid-2000s that cosmetic

surgery came to the fore as an interesting and problematic part of Korean mass culture.

In 2006, there were three Korean-made movies that took cosmetic surger y as a main

narrative device, and while the f irst t wo movies—the summer thriller Cinderella and

the gruesome romance Time —rendered complete makeovers as dangerous, disgusting

and pathological, the summer’s greatest hit romantic comedy, 200 Pounds Beauty, took

a positive take on cosmetic surgery and even idealized and glamorized life-threatening

surgeries. After the international success of 200 Pounds Beauty, and as cosmetic surgery

quickly became a popular aspect of culture and a significant industry in Korea, it became

increasingly dif f icult to f ind negative portraya ls of cosmetic surger y in Korea’s mass

culture. A s Joanna Elf ving-Hwang has argued in her analysis of the makeover realit y

TV show Let Me In (2011-present), “cosmetic surgery is, by and large, represented either

positively or neutrally in South Korean popular culture and media.” However, it was

around the same time that the phrase ‘Korea’s obsession with cosmetic surgery’ began

to make headlines in the international media, which often rendered it sarcastically or

pejoratively.

W hile there has been no critical writing on contemporar y art’s take on cosmetic

surger y, in this essay I selected and focused on three young Korean artists’ work s to

see how they each portray and critique Korea’s extravagant cosmetic surger y culture

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and industry. The recent artworks by Mind C, Tae Yeon Kim, and Ji Yeo bring critical

perspectives to the cosmetic-surgery boom, which would otherwise remain unchallenged

in representation. Throug h close a na lyses, I have a rg ued t hat t hey each ra ise some

important and complex issues that were rarely addressed in previous representations of

plastic surgery, such as the homogenization of facial features among Gangnam’s young

women, the changing aesthetics and ethics in contemporary Korea, and pain and desire

involved in extreme ma keovers. We a lso saw that the artists’ ga zes and opinions are

somehow shaped and informed by the culture and the prevalent cultural discourses on

Korea’s cosmetic surgery phenomenon.

The webcomic artist Mind C’s illustrations, titled Gangnam Beauty, portray and

poke fun at the identical-looking women who emerge fromthe same clinic in Gangnam,

Seou l ‘s mec c a of be aut y sa lons a nd pla st ic su rger y cl i n ic s. M i nd C ’s work keen ly

captures and highlights the ‘surreal reality’ of Gangnam’s common street scene with his

unique humor and drawing skills, but we could identif y problems of gender and racial

stereotypes. Apparently, Mind C intends to ridicule and attack only female consumers of

cosmetic surgery, while all recent data and reports indicate a high (and rising) number

of men who have gone under the knife. More problematically, the single male character

in Mind C’s illustrations is a Caucasian man, who is depicted as staring with confusion

at the identical-looking women in Gangnam. W hile depicting his female characters as

clueless victims of their own obsessions with cosmetic surgery, Mind C gave the power

of look ing to t he ma le foreigner, t hus reproducing t he Western colonia list ways of

representation where the subject of gaze is always the Western men and the object of gaze

is typically foreign, exotic women.

Similar to Mind C, female artists Kim Tae Yeon and Ji Yeo depict mostly women

as active consumers of cosmetic surger y. That said, K im and Yeo intend to show the

‘process’ and complexities of cosmetic surgery, and both exhibit much layered, emotional

and empathetic portrayals of the women who decide to go under the knife. For example,

in almost every painting of Kim’s Righteously Gorgeous (唯美獨尊圖) series, the viewer

can find a female figure who expresses her earnest wish or desperation to receive cosmetic

surgery—praying on her knees and/or crying in isolation—to achieve a ‘better self ’ and

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a ‘better life’ in the Korean society where appearance is linked to success. By employing

the scroll format, Kim narrates the various, successive stages of a woman’s life before and

after getting surgeries, from a pre-surgery unhappy life to a post-surgery romance. The

photographer Yeo started her Beauty Recovery Room series in 2008 by taking her camera

inside Gangnam’s plastic surgery facilities, to draw attention to the ‘surgery’ aspect of

cosmetic surgery, as opposed to the ‘beauty’ part. Yeo’s intimate photographs of women

enduring post-surger y procedures a nd suf ferings in recover y rooms express complex

feelings of pain and hope, mixed with strength—instead of sorrow or distress.

In fact, both Kim and Yeo have suggested that their critiques are aimed not at the

women who go under the knife, but at the society that drives them to do so. Both artists

have portrayed plastic surger y clinics as microcosms of Korean societ y, obsessed with

appearance. K im’s title, 唯美獨尊圖, which translates as “Painting that describes the

current phenomenon in which people believe beauty is the most important thing in the

world ”, clearly indicates that the artist intends to describe the ‘phenomenon,’ not the

people. By employing traditional Buddhist painting conventions to critique the cosmetic-

surger y phenomenon and the industr y, K im also successfully revealed the ironies and

conf licts society deriving from the awkward mix of Confucian disciplines and neoliberal

discourses in contemporary Korean. In Yeo’s case, the artist has literally expressed her

intention for her Beauty Recovery Room series to criticize the “social pressure in Korea”

and its “male-dominated media” that “endlessly reinforces its model of the ideal women”

(Yeo). It should also be noted that Yeo is the only artist among those mentioned in this

essay to have portrayed a male patient of cosmetic surgery, and this strengthens the artist’s

professed intention to blame the Korean society and the cosmetic surgery industry rather

than the people. It hints at a perspective that is distinguished from common, gendered

views about cosmetic surgery.

The focus of this analysis has been to examine recent representations of cosmetic

surger y in Korean art and mass culture, and I have closely analyzed them in order to

reveal their complexities as related to other various issues in Korean society and history.

Further research on the relationship bet ween cosmetic surger y and global art histor y

would complement and enrich many streams and courses of visual culture studies.

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This essay was received on December 14, 2015 and approved for publication on April 22, 2016.