Everybody believes that there's lots of plastic surgery happening in South Korea. But does it matter, when there are also tons of plastic surgery happening in other countries, like the US, Japan, or China? That is undeniable fact.
According to statistic by USA Today, the U.S. leads the world in lipolplasty (fat removal), breast augmentation, blepharoplasty (for the eye region), and abdominoplasty (for abs). China, Japan, and Brazil beat the U.S. in nose jobs. So, the large number of Korean plastic surgery procedure is not so serious as we thought.
One may argue that South Korea leads the world in per-person plastic surgery. Data collected and calculated by The Economist last year revealed that there are 1,6% of Korean (both women and men) had undergone plastic surgery. According to the Korean Newspaper Chosun.com, a half of people who had plastic surgery are non-invasive surgeries like peeling and botox.
Also, the statistic above does not include for tourists who come to South Korea from surrounding Asian countries such as Mongo, Thailand, Malaysia, etc., for plastic surgery. The number of foreigners come to Korea for plastic surgery is significant, because of Korean plastic surgery prestige.
That is to say, although Korean plastic surgery has a bad reputation, that it is being abused with bunch of plastic surgery procedure occurs everyday, or it is distorting natural beauty of Korean, the problem is not as serious as considered. Knowing that will keep us from involving in meaningless controversial about Korean plastic surgery.
