IT’S time for Turkey to move over, there’s a new country taking over as the hotspot for surgery, and it’s an even longer flight.
The destination has become so popular that the country’s Tourist Organisation now offers ‘plastic surgery certificates’ for patients returning home with their brand new, unrecognisable faces.
In South Korea’s capital Seoul, the streets of Gangnam are lit up with posters promising a full makeover with little down time.
And with 457 clinics to choose from in the 15-mile area, you have more than enough options to pick from.
Whether you’re going for a nose job, chin implants, or a concoction of laser treatments, the surge in beauty treatments for a while left surgery tourists stuck in the airport, facing questions about why their passport photos didn’t look like them.
It’s no secret has had global domination in recent years thanks to the rising popularity of K pop, but it’s also their beauty scene that has tourists swarming there.
In fact, from the country is now so popular that reveal one Korean beauty product sells almost every 15 seconds and K Beauty represents over a tenth of everyday skincare sales at the British retailer.
And surgery in the country is one of the cheapest in the world, while a boob job would set you back £6,000 in England and £3,500 in Turkey, it will costs just £3,300 here.
UK tourism to the country has skyrocketed in recent years, going from 44,000 in 2022 to 147,000 last year.
It’s also the country that performs the most plastic surgery in the world per capita, with an industry worth £7.9 billion, mainly down to tourists.
‘Assembly Lines’
A quick look at shows many Brits heading there for a quick makeovers at a cheap price, and it seems convenient too.
Thuy, from the UK, jets to the country every single year for beauty treatments at Lamiche, a popular clinic for tourists.
On her most recent trip, Thuy got 12 skincare treatments in a single go and while she admitted they were not for the ‘weak-hearted’, she did say the pain was ultimately worth it.
Reviews online were not as keen on the practice, claiming it was like being in a factory, rushing people through to make a quick buck.
One wrote: “Factory-like experience, non-personal at all. They flood you with several treatment recommendations in one go, we were four people we all heard the same ‘issues’ with our face.”;
Another said: “In one word: traumatic. You’re moved around floors quickly and without time to make decisions about what is happening.
“The treatment room is kind of spooky and the laser people come in and begin the treatments without warning or telling you what each treatment is.
“Once the treatment began someone came in and halted it to make me sign consent forms and share side effects that hadn’t been mentioned during the consultation.
“I had a panic attack because one person started doing a treatment I had declined without warning.
“None of the people doing the treatments spoke English, so while I was crying there was no way I could communicate with them.”;
“The consultation with the doctor was 3-5 minutes. Felt like on an assembly line. They didn’t allow me to take pictures of my scanned skin. Better safe your ,”; penned a third.
One of the larger problems with getting surgery in South Korea is the language barrier, as noted by some reviewers.
The lack of communication during treatment is not okay.
Lamiche Patient
Many claim professionals couldn’t explain what procedures they were having done or the pain they would experience.
Another wrote: “After you pay for the service, the interpreter leaves you in the hands of the nurses and doctors.
“This is where things need to be improved. The lack of communication during treatment is not okay.
“I was put in the worst pain I’ve ever felt and at no point during the first part of my treatment did the nurse stop to check if I was okay.”;
The lack of transparency means it can be hard to decipher what clients are genuinely experiencing and what is biased reviews.
Fabulous has reached out to Lamiche for comment.
Ghost Doctors
But assembly line laser treatments aren’t the worst beauty dangers in the country.
The rise of beauty tourism in the country has put such a strain on the industry that it has led to ‘ghost doctors’ operating on unknowing patients.
While many will have consultations with certified doctors, they disappear once the patient has gone under, swapping them for less qualified surgeons to complete the operation.
It is, of course, illegal, but it was a common occurrence in South Korea for years until one mum refused to back down after her son died during a relatively simple plastic surgery.
On 8 September 2016, Kwon Dae-hee, a university student, went to a plastic surgery clinic called Center A in Seoul to get his jaw ‘fixed’.
Kwon had been bullied since his school years because of his prominent chin, so he decided to spend £4,000 to get it slimmed down.
The 24-year-old trusted the clinic, which boasted it was “14 Years In Without A Single Medical Accident.”;
The surgery is relatively easy and quick to perform, taking around one to two hours, but Dae-hee was on the operating table for hours before slipping into a 49-day coma and ultimately dying from his injuries.
I immediately felt that I needed that evidence.
Lee Na-geumKwon's Mother
The plastic surgeon called for an ambulance at 11:30pm that night, reports Rotten Mango, claiming Kwon was conscious but had low blood pressure and may need a transfusion.
But when Kwon arrived, doctors were frantically trying to save his life as his heart had stopped for two minutes and he had lost two-thirds of the blood in his body.
The day after the surgery, the plastic surgeon went to the hospital, claiming the procedure went on as normal and offered CCTV footage of the operating room to prove it
It is not a requirement, but some clinics do soto increase trust. “I immediately felt that I needed that evidence,”; said Kwon’s mother, Lee Na-geum.
He was declared brain dead the next day, and while Kwon lay in a coma, his mother watched the footage over 500 times, trying to piece together what went wrong.
‘Blood Mopped 13 Times’
In the footage,the surgery starts at 12:56 p.m. when the plastic surgeon begins to cut Kwon’s jawbone.
There were also three nursing assistants in the room.
After an hour, the first plastic surgeon left, and another doctor entered the operating room.
The two surgeons entered and left the room, but for almost 30 minutes, there was no doctor in the operating room at all, although nursing assistants were present.
The clinic advertised that the head doctor would operate from start to finish, but the CCTV showed that was not the case.
While he did cut Kwon’s jaw bones, the rest of the surgery was completed by a doctor with no plastic surgery license and who had just graduated from medical school.
The surgery finally finished at 4:17 p.m., more than three hours after it started, according to the footage.
According to Kim Seon-woong, the former law director of the Korean Association of Plastic Surgeons, who has run a plastic surgery clinic for 25 years, jaw surgery like the one Kwon had should take an hour and a half or less for an experienced doctor, reports CNN.
When the surgery was over, both of the doctors went home, leaving nurses in charge of Kwon.
Kwon’s mother looked on as blood poured out of his body onto the floor while nurses did nothing to stop it.
Instead, they corrected their makeup or looked at their cellphones. In total, they mopped the bloody floor 13 times.
When medical professionals evaluated the footage, they found he had likely lost three times as much blood as what the doctors had said when they called the emergency services.
“I don’t think this ghost doctor checked how much blood my son shed,”; she added. “I was so angry at that fact. Had just one of the three doctors checked how much he bled,”; she said, “but no one did.”;
Despite Kwon’s death, the clinic stayed open and continued to advertise that it had gone 14 years without a patient experiencing any accident. The clinic closed in 2020. It is unclear why.
His mother and father moved to Seoul to protest outside daily for CCTV to be in every operating room since Kwon died.
In 2021, the law was passed, and the plastic surgeon was sentenced to involuntary manslaughter and imprisoned for three years.
However, not everyone is pleased with CCTV in surgery rooms.
The bill had faced criticism by doctors, hospitals and several medical groups in the country, including the 140,000-member Korean Medical Association (KMA).
They claim the move will violate patient privacy and discourage doctors from taking risks to save lives.
While those in the industry are not a fan, the wider public is.
Jeong Seoung-eun, who had attended Kwon’s case to support his family, said: “I want to show my support so my country can become a better one by correcting faults in the (medical) system.”;
