It’s no secret that South Korea has something of a fondness for cosmetic surgery. We’ve published countless articles about how woman and men are flocking to the clinics to enlarge their eyes, tuck in their chins and shape their noses. The results are startling and the “before and after” images are definitely impressive, but now, sadly, pets are also finding themselves on the receiving end of the worrying craze.

According to a Focus-Asia report, earlier this month the Chosun Ilbo (Korea Daily) newspaper featured an article which documented the rise of cosmetic surgeries being performed on dogs and other pets in South Korea.

Existing cosmetic procedures for pets apparently range from making an animal’s eyes bigger to removing wrinkles from their face, all in the name of making the pet cuter. One lady, who had recently taken her five-month-old dog to the vet for vaccinations, was even advised by the doctor to get a procedure to remove the wrinkles from around her dog’s mouth.

▼ We’re not sure that puppy fat is the same as wrinkles…

Flickr/Lisa L. Weidmeier

Of course, there are medically sound reasons for performing plastic surgery on an animal, such as certain in pugs and bulldogs when the long roof of their mouth and short snouts make it difficult for them to breathe. In such cases, a “nose job” is conducted to help open the nasal passages and facilitate proper respiration. Other plastic surgeries include removing wrinkles to prevent the build up of bacteria and removing fur and skin from around the eyes to aid vision.

Yet, the rise of purely cosmetic surgeries on pets say quite a lot about the importance of appearances in today’s society. One veterinarian in Korea was quoted in the article as saying: “Surgeries such as these are completely safe. There is a right as a pet owner to make your pet cuter.”

Animal rights groups strongly disagree and have been quite outspoken against the unnecessary procedures, stating that while people can make the choice to get plastic surgery, pets cannot tell their owners what they are thinking – nor, for that matter, would they care about their physical appearance enough to want an operation in the first place. Protestors have also argued that forcing an animal to have cosmetic surgery is abusive and should be prohibited by law immediately.

We can’t help but agree – I mean, aren’t pets perfectly cute as they are? If the following pictures – of, thankfully, perfectly ‘natural’ pets – don’t convince you of that, then we don’t know what will.

Flickr/Tommy Hemmert Olesen

Flickr/BusyBee-cr

Source: Focus-Asia
Top Image: Jorbasa Fotografie

And all it took was a few strips of tape!

Over the last few years, our Japanese reporter Mariko Ohanabatake has been noticing something unusual whenever she looks in the mirror. Instead of seeing her reflection, she’s starting to see the face of a woman she doesn’t recognise. “Who is this mysterious woman?” Mariko pondered, until reality hit her like a brick — “No way…that’s me?!”

“Age is just a number!” Mariko kept telling herself, but she couldn’t help but feel like she was at some sort of crossroads, faced with a decision. Should she let time continue to ravage her face until she looked like an old woman? Or should she try and find some ways to recapture her youthful face?

▼ Mariko had always imagined herself ageing gracefully like Japanese singer YUKI, who is 50 years old.

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A post shared by YUKI (@yukiweb.net_official)

So when Mariko came across Magie Lab’s Face Lift Secret Tape – Super Hard at retail chain Loft, she was intrigued. At only 900 yen (US$7.80) it almost seemed like a joke item — after all, can you really rejuvenate your face for under ten dollars?! Joke item or not though, it was with a serious determination that she bought a pack, which contained of 30 strips of tape.

The package had a woman on the front with the slogan “make your face look ageless”. The package also claimed it was ideal for beginners, as if sticking tape to your face had levels of mastery.

As Mariko took the strips of tape out of the box, she was struck by just how primitive it seemed to be. For 900 yen she wasn’t exactly expecting some sort of fancy face-lifting equipment, but was sticking a bunch of tape on her face really going to make her look younger?

The tape placement seemed to be dependent on the areas that you want to lift. If you wanted to give the area around your eyes a boost, the instructions said to apply tape to the temple area. To erase laugh lines, apply around the ear area. Mariko decided to ‘lift’ her eyelids, which she felt were looking a little saggy these days.

Once she’d given her face a quick wash, Mariko was ready to start taping. The tape seemed similar to a band aid — light and stretchy, which made applying it quite difficult. The tape had to be applied pretty firmly for it to work, and Mariko ended up burning through a few strips before she got the hang of the technique.

But eventually, when she managed to apply a strip correctly, the result was instant!

▼ The tape has a matte finish, so it blends well with your skin.

Mariko’s saggy eyelids got an instant lift, and her eyes looked wider, too. “All this just from sticking a piece of tape to my face?!” Mariko mused. It was like she’d travelled back in time to meet her younger self.

Originally Mariko was only going to test out ‘lifting’ her eyelids, but seeing how effective the tape was she decided to rejuvenate more and more. Next up was her face line.

Mariko applied some tape around her ears, and as if by magic, the corners of her mouth went up and her laugh lines faded!

Struck with a feverish desire to restore her whole face to a more youthful look, Mariko stuck some tape under her ears and pulled them upwards, and her whole face shape changed. Her chin also became more defined!

It’s often said that it’s easy to become addicted to plastic surgery; once you get one procedure done, you’ll want to get more and more, and as Mariko sat with her face covered in tape, she understood why.  Her eyes were less droopy, her chin much more defined — it was like she’d entered a wormhole and travelled ten years in the past.

“But surely you’d be able to see all that tape on her face,” some of you might be thinking, but Mariko is confident that won’t be an issue. She has bangs and doesn’t tie her hair up a lot, so the tape is well hidden behind her curtain of hair.

▼ Fingers crossed a rogue gust of wind doesn’t reveal her secrets!

It was like she’d bathed in the fountain of youth, such was the power of the lifting tape. Of course, now she’s revealed her trick on the Internet, the impact might be slightly less effective, but maybe this could be perfect for high school reunions or something.

“How is this not more popular?!” Mariko wondered, as she admired her rejuvenated face in the mirror. Maybe people weren’t ready to embrace such a practice, or maybe they felt embarrassed about being caught with a face covered in tape.

▼ Mariko considered the possibility of being compared to Japanese impressionist Korokke, who is known for his crazy faces.

大阪天満宮そばに「コロッケのころっ家」　タレントのコロッケさんがプロデュースhttps://t.co/gniDQbriGY pic.twitter.com/GGy5vKLZ9A

— 梅田経済新聞 (@umedakeizai) December 16, 2021

Still, Mariko was impressed with how effective the face-lifting tape was and will definitely be using it more regularly. The pack she got this time was a ‘trial’ sized pack for newcomers to the world of face tape and had only 30 strips, but her next purchase will be the 100 strip pack for sure.

Images © SoraNews24
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We’ve already covered South Korea’s attitudes about plastic surgery; basically, that it’s considered at worst a necessary evil for some folks to get ahead in life.

That cultural attitude has led the country to be widely considered the world cosmetic surgery capital, and has even led a handful, like this obsessed woman, to spend years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars artificially perfecting their appearance.

We’re not sure who the woman is, but we hope we’re not out of line when we say that, before all the surgery, she wasn’t exactly a looker. Still, the jury is out on whether looking like your face is made out of candle wax is a worthy trade-off.

Korean speakers, feel free to give your input in the comments section, but the video below appears to show a male model judging the woman’s appearance at various stages of the seven years of cosmetic surgery she underwent:

In the next video, we see a snippet of the woman’s personal story and see her visiting a surgeon for a touch-up. We can’t overlook the fact that the surgeons in these types of stories never appear to have had any surgery themselves, which is kind of like a shady supplement salesman refusing to take his own product for fear it might kill him.

Whatever your opinion on plastic surgery, it’s clear there’s a thin line between it being moderately beneficial and turning you into an uncanny valley video game character come to life.

Source: Zaeega

You like sausage, right? Of course you do. But no one ever wants to see how the sausage is made. So why did this plastic surgery clinic in Seoul think it was a good idea to display two towering columns filled with the jaw bones of their past patients? It’s enough to make you rethink your pursuit of the perfect chin.

Like some twisted scene out of Saw or even your run of the mill bone graveyard, the remnants of approximately 1,000 people stand piled high at a clinic in the swanky Gangnam district of Seoul (yes, the same Gangnam from the horse-riding tuxedo-wearing Psy). If the “art piece” is anything to go by, business is doing well. If it’s hard for you to imagine why this plastic surgeon came to own so many jaw bones, here’s some before and after shots of Korean women who had chin surgery:

Get the idea? The bone tower photo was posted on the clinic’s homepage and horrified people around the world. It has since been taken down following a government order to dispose of the installation and an investigation into the clinic’s medical practices. The clinic could face fines for the improper disposal of body parts because, you know, they didn’t dispose of them at all.

Now who wants some barbecue ribs? I’m starving!

Source: Jiji
Images: Anime Visual, Surge Cosmetic

Possibly taking a fashion cue from The Joker, women in South Korea are undergoing a bizarre plastic surgery procedure to enhance their smile. Dubbed “mouth corners lift” or “smile lipt” (a made-up word incorporating the words “lip” and “lift”), the surgery involves cutting the sides of the mouth to create the illusion of a smile.

Aone Plastic Surgery in South Korea performs the procedure, which involves plastic surgeons cutting the muscle that pulls the corners of the mouth downward. This weakens the muscle and forms a permanent smile. Regardless of how you are actually feeling, Aone suggests, “When mouth corners lift up, a smile is created” so you can have a “smiling impression without actually smiling”

According to Aone, Min-A Shin and Soo-hyun Kim have the most attractive mouth corners among Korean entertainers and it is their smile they are trying to mimic through the use of surgery.

▼   Mina-A Shin. Now that’s a smile anyone would be lucky to pay for.Image: Wikipedia

▼  Soo-hyun Kim and his ideal smirk.Image: Kim Soo Hyun Facebook

The Smile Lipt surgery promises a perkier smile, just like the famous Korean actors above, but the difference is a little hard to imagine without seeing the before and after pictures, so let’s take a look at just a few:

▼   Before

▼   After

▼   Before

▼   After

▼   Before

▼   After

▼   Before

▼   AfterImage: Disney Wikia

See the difference?

If you’d like to go even more in-depth, Aone Plastic Surgery put together an informative video (in English) with more information than you’d ever want to know on this strange procedure.

While it might be useful to let people know you are happy even when your mouth is relaxed, we could see how having a smile all the time might get you into trouble because everyone goes through times in their life where smiling is just not appropriate. So think long and hard before getting this procedure and just know that if you do decide to go under the knife, you’ll be going through funerals, breakups, and fights with your significant other all with a slight smirk on your face.

▼   He looks so happy!Image: Batman Wiki

Source: Jin115, Irorio

For those who have lost a part of their body either through illness or after being involved in an accident, plastic surgery offers not only the hope of repairing any physical damage but also restoring self-confidence. One phenomenal case of life-altering plastic surgery currently receiving a lot of attention here in Asia is that of a surgeon in China who is growing a replacement nose on the forehead of a man who lost his during traffic accident.

The restoration process involves cultivating a new nose on the patient’s forehead and then transplanting it onto the area where the old nose once was. The man’s new nose has been grown to include all the features that you would normally expect, from the nostrils and nasal bridge to the mucous membrane inside the nose itself.

The man, from Quanzhou, Fujian province, is believed to have been quite the looker prior to his tragic road accident, and elected to have the new nose grown on his forehead so that it would appear as natural as possible and help restore him to his former handsome glory.

• Conventional plastic surgery just wasn’t an option

After reviewing the man’s case, conventional plastic surgery was deemed out of the question due to the severity of the damage. The man’s surgeon suggested that a completely new nose be cultivated on his forehead and transplanted when it had fully grown. After losing his nose, the man had become prone to allergies and even suffered from asthma. He was also struggling to come to terms with his new physical appearance, and had even developed hyperventilation syndrome. This was the first time the man had heard of such a procedure but, putting his trust in the surgeon, he decided to take the plunge.

• The steps involved

1.) First an area of skin on the man’s forehead was stretched.

2.) Next, the cartilage that would form the structure of the nose was transplanted onto his forehead. In this case, cartilage from one of the man’s ribs was used.

3.) Next, an artificial membrane, complete with its own blood supply, was transplanted onto the area. Both nostrils were then opened.

Reaching the end of stage three took a total of nine months and the man is currently in the final stages of surgery wherein his new nose will be made more aesthetically pleasing and finally transplanted from the forehead and onto where it belongs. At the present time, despite looking in every way identical to a normal nose, the newly grown sniffer is firmly attached to the man’s forehead and serves no anatomical purpose. The patient wears a hat and mask when going anywhere in public but admits, “I can’t wait for the day when I can do away with the mask and breathe normally.”

If everything goes according to plan, that day might just be around the corner! Cultivating cells from the body in this way reduces the possibility of the patient’s body rejecting the transplanted tissue, but to cultivate a nose on your forehead clearly requires not just the body to support it but also quite the mental resolve.

Below is an illustration of the steps involved, with the fourth and final step being the reconstruction of the cultivated nose.

There’s only a little way to go before the surgery is complete, and we here at RocketNews24 hope that the final stages go smoothly!

If you’re feeling brave, why not check out the video below!

Video/top image: YouTube