Asian Idol
Korean cool started with films and music. Now, it's hip to look like the stars -- with the help of the surgeon's knife.
SEOUL -- Cate Siu lives in Hong Kong, but she's a fan of South Korean television shows and she likes to keep up with Korean celebrities on the Internet. Her favorite is Korean soap-opera star, Song Hye Kyo, whose bee-stung lips and feminine features she admires.
"Korean actresses have prominent and elegant noses," says Ms. Siu, a 25-year-old aspiring actress. "They look so pretty."
So, when Ms. Siu decided she'd have a better shot at breaking into the entertainment business by improving her looks with a surgical makeover, she knew where she wanted to go. In April, she flew more than 2,000 kilometers to Seoul for procedures to raise the bridge of her nose, make her eyes look larger and to sharpen her chin.
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Across Asia, Korea is cool. From fashion to music to film, the nation of 48 million people is redefining style. And as notions of Korean beauty become popularized by the country's exploding cultural exports, women from around the region -- and some men, too -- are flocking to South Korea to have their faces remodeled.
"A lot of my patients bring a picture of a Korean star from a magazine and say 'I want to look like that,' " says Chung Jong Pil, a surgeon who runs the Cinderella Plastic Surgery Clinic in a smart Seoul neighborhood.
Dr. Chung estimates that just under 10% of his customers come from overseas, mostly from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong; the rest are locals. Jung Dong Hak, a surgeon who specializes in rhinoplasty, or nose jobs, at the Shimmian Rhinoplasty Clinic, says that up to 15% of his patients come from outside Korea. That number has been rising in the past few years. "The increase has been very big since the Korean Wave started," Dr. Jung says.
Surgeon Jung Dong Hak lengthened this 24-year-old Korean woman's nose and lifted her bridge.
Not long ago, many people saw Korea as a decidedly uncool industrial park pumping out low-cost cars and appliances. But that started to change in the late 1990s, when the Korean government decided that entertainment could be an export industry. The film business in particular benefited from official subsidies and a big influx of private capital.
Now, countries from Japan to Singapore are being flooded with Korean hip-hop and pop acts, melodramatic soap operas and movies from horror to romantic comedies. The fashion conscious are picking up on South Korean style trends (from dramatic wind-blown hairdos for men to tiny jackets finishing under the chest for women.)
The final episode of "Jewel in the Palace," a dramatic series about court intrigue during Korea's Chosun Dynasty, starring Korean beauty Lee Young Ae, this year became the most-watched television show in Hong Kong history. More than 40% of the territory tuned in. Korean pop star BoA outsells Britney Spears in Japan. Last year, Chinese television stations carried more than 100 Korean shows.
Rebellion in Asia
Adding to Korea's allure is the fact the country has made it to the global big time while hewing fairly closely to its traditional culture at a time many people elsewhere in Asia feel that they are losing theirs to Western influences. Korean society remains quite patriarchal and family-oriented.
"People are accepting Korea as a standard, as a model to follow," says Habibul Khondker, a sociologist at the National University of Singapore. "Korea has made economic progress and integrated Western technology without giving up many of its own traditions."
AP Photo
Rain, a Korean pop singer whose nose is much admired by men who want makeovers.
The popularity of the country's stars is establishing Korean ethnic features as a standard of beauty across the region. Some sociologists see a subtext in the craze: a rebellion by Asian people against the images of Caucasian good looks that dominate much of the international media.
Others see dangers. For a start, says Wang Simei, vice general affairs director of the government-affiliated All-China Women's Federation, there's the risk that patients could be "physically hurt during the surgeries." Ms. Wang, whose organization proposes that China ban minors from having unnecessary cosmetic surgery, also worries about the long-term psychological fallout for people banking too much on their altered looks to succeed in life. "Korean culture is something worth studying," Ms. Wang says. "But we might have paid too much attention to their soap operas and pretty actresses."
Critics also assert that what appeals to many non-Korean Asians about Korean looks are exactly those features that make them look more Western. Koreans, related to the Mongols who once ruled the Central Asian steppes, tend to have more prominent noses and, often, lighter skin than other Asians. In physical terms, the Korean ideal is a relatively small, oval face with a high-bridged nose and large eyes with Western-style double eyelids. Many Northeast Asians have a single eyelid and pieces of skin known as epicanthic folds that can make their eyes appear smaller.
Lee Young Ae, from "Jewel in the Palace," is much admired for her white skin, feminine, oval face and double eyelids. She is one of the celebrities most mentioned by patients at Dr. Jung's Shimmian Rhinoplasty Clinic. And Jun Ji Hyun, another actress best-known in the region for her starring role in the romantic comedy "My Sassy Girl," is especially admired for her straight, high-bridged nose.
Complicating matters further, some other Korean actresses have spoken openly about their own plastic surgeries, leading to the widespread belief that nearly all stars have gone under the knife. Photos purported to be before-and-after shots of Korean stars are widely posted on the Internet.
False Idols
Lee Bingping, a woman from Foshan in southern China who visited Dr. Jung's clinic last year, is aware that the very Korean features she admires may be the result of the surgeon's knife. "I think Korean actresses are pretty. Because of Korean plastic surgery techniques, they have a very soft, graceful style," Ms. Lee says. "If you have the money and the resources, you should try to look as good as possible."
Still, surgeons contend that popular conceptions about the prevalence of plastic surgery among celebrities are wildly overstated. "It's just not true," declares Dr. Jung. "Korean women are just beautiful."
Exactly how widespread cosmetic surgery has become in Korea is hard to track. But the number of surgeons performing image-enhancing work such as nose jobs and eyelid surgery has grown sharply in the past five years. One professional group, the Korean Society of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery, says its membership has risen nearly 85% since 2000, to 960.
Lee Yihsiu, who runs the Taipei office of International Plastic Surgery, which matches up overseas patients with Korean surgeons, says business is "growing amazingly." She says she arranges for 15 to 20 patients to visit South Korea for operations every month; clients come not only from Taiwan but from China and Hong Kong. Ms. Lee, 27, had her own surgical makeover earlier this year in Seoul -- a nose job ahead of her wedding.
Korean surgeons are making the most of their country's star power. In Dr. Chung's consulting room at the Cinderella clinic, under the glass top on the coffee table, are dozens of autographed Polaroid pictures of him posing with Korean pop musicians, actors and actresses. The doctor describes the stars as friends and won't disclose which of them also might be patients.
Dr. Chung says that beliefs about the power of surgery to transform appearances can be a mixed blessing, however. "People come with before-and-after pictures of celebrities," he says. "People expect a lot because of those kinds of pictures. But it isn't realistic. We'll tell people they will look better, but not like the stars in the pictures."
韩国整容风潮席卷亚洲
Cate Siu是香港人，但她特别喜欢看韩国电视剧，整天在网上跟人聊韩国明星的八卦新闻。她的最爱是美丽动人的韩国电视剧女演员宋慧乔(Song Hye Kyo)，欣赏她性感的厚嘴唇和女人味十足的身材。
“韩国女演员的鼻子高挺而优雅，”25岁从事演艺事业的Siu说道，“她们太漂亮了。”
因此Siu决定去整容，觉得这样能在演艺界有更大的发展机会。她知道该去哪儿：2005年4月，她飞了1000多英里来到韩国汉城的一家诊所，要垫高鼻梁，让眼睛变大，下巴变尖。
整个亚洲，韩流正劲。从时尚、音乐到电影，这个人口4,800万的国家正在重新诠释流行的含义。随著韩国文化的爆炸性输出，韩国美女的形象也深入人心，亚洲各国的女人--甚至一些男人--都蜂拥至汉城重新塑造她（他）们的脸庞。
“我的很多客人都拿著杂志上的韩国明星照来找我，说'我要变成这个样子'。”位于汉城一个时尚地区的灰姑娘整容诊所(Cinderella Plastic Surgery Clinic)的主治医师Chung Jong Pil说道。
Chung医生估计他的诊所只有10%的客人来自国外，其余都是韩国本地人；大多数海外客人来自中国大陆、台湾和香港。Jung Dong Hak医生在汉城另一家诊所专门做鼻整形术，他说其病人大概有15%来自海外，这一比例近几年来呈不断上升趋势。
这一趋势也反映出韩国自身的形象变化。不久之前，许多人觉得韩国是个不怎么成熟的工业园区，只会生产廉价汽车和电器；但这个看法在90年代末逐渐发生改变，当时韩国政府下决心把娱乐业做成一个出口行业，特别是韩国电影业，政府支持和私人资本的大量流入让其受益匪浅。
现在，从日本到新加坡的亚洲各国都风靡韩国的嘻哈音乐、街舞、电视剧，以及从恐怖片到浪漫喜剧的各种电影。
由韩国美女李英爱出演的电视剧《大长今》(Jewel in the Palace)讲述的是朝鲜王朝时期的宫廷斗争，该剧2005年在香港放映，成为香港有史以来收视率最高的电视剧，有40%以上的香港人收看了这部电视剧。韩国美少女歌手宝儿(BoA)在日本的唱片销量超过了布兰妮(Britney Spears)。2004年间，中国大陆的电视台播放了100多部韩国电视剧。
韩国明星的号召力促使韩国相貌成为整个亚洲的审美标准。一些社会学家发现这一潮流的隐含意义：虽然西方俊男美女的形象长期霸占国际娱乐舞台，但亚洲人正在兴起一场革命，确立自己的审美情趣。
有些人也从中看到危机的存在。中华全国妇女联合会(All-China Women's Federation)办公厅副主任王思梅表示，妇女太关注自己相貌将会带来长期的心理伤害。“韩国文化值得我们研究，” 王思梅说道，“但我们可能对韩国的电视剧和漂亮的女明星过于热衷了。”
批评家也指出，韩国人相貌中受人青睐的许多特点正是西方人的一些相貌特征。韩国的整容医生们说，韩国人拥有曾经统治中亚大草原的蒙古人的一些血统，其鼻子更高，肤色也比其他亚洲人白一些。从人体学角度而言，理想的韩国人拥有较小的鹅蛋脸、高挺的鼻子、大大的眼睛和西方人的眼睑。白种人等种族的眼皮一般都是双眼皮，而亚洲北部的许多人是单眼皮，使其眼睛看起来较小。
让情况更为复杂的是，一些韩国女演员公开表示自己做过整形手术，这使大家普遍猜测几乎每个韩国明星都整过容。在互联网上，能很容易地找到据称是韩国明星整容前后的照片对比。
来自中国南方城市佛山的李冰萍(音)在2004年去过Jung医生的诊所，她说韩国人脸上很多好看的地方都是整型医生的手笔。“我觉得韩国女演员很美，这是韩国整型技术的功劳，让她们的脸看起来柔和而雅致，”李冰萍说，“如果有钱和精力的话，就该让自己越漂亮越好。”
这些整容手术的普及程度很难估算，不过做隆鼻和双眼皮等整型手术的医生数量正在急剧增长。韩国整容美容协会(Korean Society of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery)称，其会员与2000年相比增长85%，达960人。另一行业组织韩国整容再造协会(Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons)有1300名会员。（据加州医学委员会称，人口3,400万的加州有864名整型医生。）
“媒体宣传和社会氛围都让年轻人觉得整容是很正常的事情，”把韩国整型医生介绍给海外客人的国际整型公司(International Plastic Surgery)台北分部负责人李颐秀(音)说，“韩国的流行文化让整容手术也变得很时尚。”
李颐秀说，整型产业“正以不可思议的速度增长”。该公司每个月安排15到20个海外客人到韩国做整容手术，客户来自中国大陆、台湾和香港。27岁的李颐秀今年年初也在汉城做了隆鼻手术，作为结婚前准备工作的一部分。
韩国整型医生都不太愿意提起曾为哪位名人执过刀。在Chung医生的办公室里，桌子玻璃的下面压著几十张他与流行歌手和演员的签名合影。他说这些明星都是他的朋友，不愿透露曾为谁做过整容手术。
Chung医生说，不能指望整容手术让人一夜之间麻雀变凤凰。“有些人拿著明星整容前后的对比照片来，希望能变成她们那样，但现实并非如此。我们能承诺让你更漂亮，但无法把你改造成照片里的明星。”
