Time for South Korea to face up to ugly obsession with plastic surgery

Kim Bok-soon disliked her nose and fantasised about changing it after learning of the Korean superstition that an upturned nose makes it harder to hold on to riches.

While waiting in a hair salon, she saw a magazine advertisement for a plastic surgery clinic and decided to go for it, despite her family's objections.

In South Korea, where physical perfection is seen as a way to improve the quality of life, including job and marriage prospects, plastic surgery can seem as commonplace as haircuts.

Kim's doctor said he could turn her into a celebrity lookalike, and Kim decided to take the plunge, taking loans and spending 30 million won (HK$212,000) for 15 operations on her face over the course of a day.

When the bandages came off, she knew something had gone horribly wrong. Later she learnt her doctor was not a plastic surgery specialist.

Five years later, Kim struggles with an array of medical problems, and is unable to close her eyes or stop her nose from running. The divorcee, 49, is unemployed and suffers depression.

"It is so horrible that people can't look at my face," Kim, crying, said in her tiny one-room Seoul flat filled with photographs from before and after the surgery.