Brow Lift Korea: Sub-Brow Lift or Forehead Lift, and Which One You Need

I am Im Young Min, Chief Director and board-certified plastic surgeon at VG Plastic Surgery in Seoul, and an adjunct professor of plastic surgery at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital. I consult on forehead and brow lifts as part of our anti-aging work. People searching for a brow lift Korea trip usually send me the same photo: eyes that look tired and heavy, and a forehead lined from trying to hold them open.

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Im Young Min

Chief Director · Board-certified in Plastic Surgery

• — Ph.D. in Medicine
• — Internship and residency, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital
• — Board-certified plastic surgeon, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital

Heavy eyes: is it the eyelid or the brow?

Most people who write to me assume they need eyelid surgery. Sometimes that is right. But when the brow itself has come down, it pushes skin onto the lid, and no amount of work on the lid will lift the brow back up.

There is a simple sign. If you raise your forehead and eyebrows to open your eyes, and the lines on your forehead come from doing that all day, the problem may sit higher than the lid. On our eye surgery page we list this as a reason to look closely, and for ptosis correction we note the opposite: it does not suit cases where the brow, not the eyelid, is what has dropped.

Two routes: the sub-brow lift and the forehead lift

On our facelift results page the brow and the forehead are filtered as two separate areas, because they are two separate problems. The difference is how far up the descent begins.

Sub-brow lift

This is for brows that have dropped onto the lid. It is approached from just below the brow, so the scar sits along the brow line rather than in the middle of the lid or the forehead. People asking about a sub-brow lift in Korea usually have heaviness concentrated at the outer half of the eye.

Forehead lift

When the forehead as a whole has descended, the eyes read heavy too. This is the droop that eyelid surgery does not reach, and a sub-brow lift is too local for it. How the forehead lift is carried out for your face is explained and drawn at the consultation.

One point causes confusion. Reducing a forehead and lifting one are different operations: forehead reduction changes the height of a high forehead and belongs to facial contouring, while a forehead lift raises tissue that has come down.

The photo at the top of this page is a sub-brow lift case from our eye surgery team. If you want to see the sub brow lift before and after in full, the sub-brow lift case page shows it with the time since surgery.

Who a brow lift suits, and who should look elsewhere

These are the situations where I would consider a brow lift in Korea.

• The brow has dropped onto the upper lid and the eye looks heavy even with a clear eyelid crease
• You lift your forehead and eyebrows to open your eyes, leaving lines across the forehead
• A previous eyelid surgery did not take the heaviness away, because the brow was the cause
• The forehead, under-eyes and cheeks have descended together and you are planning a facelift

And these are the cases where I would tell you to wait or plan differently.

• The heaviness is in the lid itself, with brows sitting where they always have — then eyelid surgery is the place to start
• Volume loss, rather than sagging, is the main cause — we would look at fat grafting first
• You have been diagnosed with hypertrophic or keloid scarring
• An uncontrolled systemic illness or a bleeding disorder

Brow lift Korea: surgery day and how many days to stay

You arrive at the clinic, and I draw the plan on your face and go through it with you, with an English interpreter in the room. Nothing starts until you agree to what is drawn. Board-certified anaesthesiologists are on site, and we publish who administers your anaesthesia.

How many days you need depends on what the brow lift is part of. A brow or forehead lift is often done in the same plan as a facelift, and our minimum stay for a face or neck lift is at least 14 days. A sub-brow lift on its own belongs to the eye area, where our minimum stay is 7 days; your exact dates are confirmed once the plan is set.

With a facelift, swelling peaks around days 5–7 and then comes down noticeably, stitches come out at one week, and tissue settles over 3–6 months. The day-by-day stay planner lays the visits out against your own flight dates.

What a brow lift in Korea costs, and how the fee is set

We do not publish a price list, because the fee depends on which operation is planned and what is combined with it. A sub-brow lift alone, a forehead lift and a brow lift within a full facelift are three different quotes.

What does not change is the policy. International patients pay the same surgical fee as Korean patients, with no foreigner surcharge, and you receive an itemised written quote before you decide anything. Our pricing policy explains what that quote covers.

What I check first in consultation

Read together, those measurements decide the route. Sometimes the brow and the lid both need attention in one plan, which is why upper eyelid surgery in Korea is often part of the same conversation.

If the lower face has loosened too, the brow is rarely the whole story. Our Korean facelift guide explains how the SMAS, mini and Crystal facelifts differ, and the full facelift page shows results filtered by brow and forehead.

Risks, and how we reduce them

A brow lift is surgery. Swelling is expected, the two sides can look uneven while tissue settles, and there is a scar. I would rather you hear that before you book a flight.

• Scarring: with a sub-brow lift the scar sits in the brow line; a history of hypertrophic or keloid scarring is a reason not to go ahead
• The wrong operation: lifting a lid under a fallen brow leaves the heaviness, so the brow and the lid are measured before anything is planned
• Anaesthesia: anaesthesiologists are on site and monitor you throughout
• Leaving too early: the minimum stay exists so that stitch removal and the checks happen here, not by guesswork after your flight

After you fly home, follow-up continues for three months through photograph reviews, written replies from your surgeon and a request for more photographs from set angles when the first ones are not enough. My background is on my profile page.