Trading faces: The ‘Korean Look’ and medical nationalism in South Korean cosmetic surgery tourism

Abstract

This paper addresses the growing phenomenon of cosmetic surgery tourism through a focus on the development of this industry in South Korea. Unlike many discussions of this topic, the paper decentres dominant narratives based on west‐goes‐east or north‐goes‐south journeys. Instead, we look at regional flows by exploring the experiences of Chinese patients travelling to South Korea in search of facial cosmetic surgery – procedures often referred to as the ‘Korean Look’ and associated with exported Korean popular culture. We focus on the contested understandings of the motives for and outcomes of this surgery between Korean surgeons and Chinese patients, documenting one example of the cultural investments and (mis)understandings that can impact on the experiences of medical tourists as they travel across national borders in search of treatment. We situate the development of cosmetic surgery tourism in Korea in the context of a discourse we call ‘medical nationalism’, showing how surgeons in particular reproduce this discourse in terms of pride in their contribution to the economic and reputational success of South Korea on a world stage. However, we demonstrate finally that, as a privatised, feminised and trivialised form of medicine, cosmetic surgery will always fail to deliver in this respect.

Health and Wellness–Related Travel: A Scoping Study of the Literature in 2010-2018

“…Several studies acknowledged a close relation to a general field of "medical tourism"; however, in many cases this conceptualization was further focused on more specific niche concepts within medical tourism (Bell et al, 2011;Holliday et al, 2015;Inhorn et al, 2012;Sethna & Doull, 2012). Concepts used alongside medical tourism included, for example, those of cosmetic surgery tourism (e.g., Ackerman, 2010;Bell et al, 2011;Holliday et al, 2015Holliday et al, , 2017Jones, 2011), reproductive tourism (Arvidsson et al, 2015;Deomampo, 2013;Inhorn, 2011a;Walmsley et al, 2017), stem cell tourism (Brophy, 2017;H. Chen & Gottweis, 2013;Petersen et al, 2014), and transplant tourism (Scheper-Hughes, 2011;Wright et al, 2013).…”

“…However, studies of reproductive travel also accounted for flows within regions; for example, within Europe legislative issues have generated flows from Germany, France, and the United Kingdom to countries such as Spain, the Czech Republic, and Belgium (Bergmann, 2011; Culley et al, 2011; Van Hoof et al, 2015). In Asia, cosmetic surgery services have generated travel flows between Asian countries, such as from China to South Korea (Holliday et al, 2017). There was also research on reproduction-related intra-regional service use in Southeast Asia (Bennett & Pangestu, 2017), with Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand emerging as main destinations for assisted reproduction.…”

Origins of nature tourism in imperial China

“…Second, seeking longevity continues in the contemporary world, and a few destinations with long lifespan are popular in the tourism market, such as the Bama County in Guangxi, China (Huang and Xu, 2018;Liu et al, 2015). Seeking physical attractiveness facilitates cosmetic surgery tourism in Thailand, South Korea, Costa Rica (Ackerman, 2010;Enteen, 2014;Holliday et al, 2017). The social and economic impact of cosmetic surgery tourism awaits scholarly investigations.…”

A Look at Collaborative Service Provision: Case for Cosmetic Surgery Medical Tourism at Korea for Chinese Patients

“…Besides providing therapeutic services, medical tourism for cosmetic surgery has been positioned as a new investment field and delivering high added value to various countries [ 3 ]. Further, a collaboration between various business entities is encouraged for the effective provision of services in the structure of the service attributes [ 4 , 5 ].…”