Korea Sliding Genioplasty Consultation Booking Appointment: Why the Flight Home Gets Booked Last

Hello, I'm Dr. Im Young Min, Chief Director and board-certified plastic surgeon at VERYGOOD Plastic Surgery in Gangnam, Seoul. I trained and was board-certified at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, and facial contouring is one of the centers I work in.

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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

Three facts here shape how you plan this trip. Before any facial contouring, nerves and bone thickness are mapped on CT. That matters because the chin bone carries the nerve that gives your lower lip its feeling. During the operation, an anesthesiologist who does not operate looks after you from the first injection until you wake up. And a medical interpreter for your language is provided at no extra charge, so you understand every word of the consultation that sets your dates.

If you already have a travel window in mind, send a front photo and a side profile on WhatsApp with those dates. Then ask which day in that window should hold the in-person consultation. That way you plan around your own face and your own calendar from the first message.

Why the surgery date waits for the consultation

In a sliding genioplasty, the surgeon cuts the lower part of the chin bone through an incision inside the lower lip. That piece is moved forward, back, up or down and held with a small plate and screws. A phone photo can't show how far it should move, in which direction, or whether bone surgery is the right answer at all. A chin that looks short in profile might be a small bone, a bite that sits back, or a strong chin muscle pulling the soft tissue.

Each of those leads to a different plan.

Some of those plans are a chin implant, a reduction, or no chin surgery at all. A 2025 systematic review compared implant-based chin augmentation with osseous genioplasty and chose between them based on what the chin needs. The trade-offs are covered in what a sliding genioplasty trades when it moves bone.

In facial contouring, bone does not grow back, so everything that doesn't need to go is left alone. For a sliding genioplasty, the same rule applies to distance: I want to move the bone the right amount, once. If the consultation shows your profile doesn't call for it, I'll tell you. A surgery date fixed from home would then just be one more thing to cancel.

What should your first message include?

The photos do most of the work, so take them with care. Take one from the front and one side profile, with the camera at eye level, your hair off your face and daylight on it. Keep your back teeth together and your lips relaxed. Many people press their lips together for a profile shot without noticing. That tension in the chin muscle hides where the chin really sits, and a strained photo can make a chin look smaller or more crooked than it is.

Then add the parts of your history that change a bone plan:

• Braces you've had or plan to have. Moving the teeth can change how the chin looks afterward.
• Implants, root canal treatment or gum problems in the lower front teeth. The bone cut runs below their roots.
• Any earlier chin filler or chin implant, and roughly when it was done.
• A recent dental panoramic X-ray, if you already have one.
• Your travel window, with the earliest and latest dates you could fly.

The surgeon who would operate reviews the photos you send. You get a plan and an estimate back by messenger or email, and from there you can book the in-person consultation in Gangnam.

How many days should the trip cover?

Your own number comes from the consultation: how many days you need in Korea is one of the answers you leave that appointment with. What I can give you here is the shape of the trip and how healing usually goes. Most of it settles over the next few weeks, and the final contour takes months. Lower lip numbness is common early on.

Consultation hours are Monday to Friday 10:00–20:00 and Saturday 10:00–16:00, Korea time. Use that when you pick your arrival day. If you land at Incheon on a Friday night, you get Saturday's shorter window. If you land on a Sunday, the consultation moves to Monday. After a long-haul flight, keep your first evening free and don't put the consultation on the day you land. Jet lag is a poor state for deciding how far your chin bone should move.

Buy the return ticket only once your days are set, or buy one you can change. Deposit and payment method are decided after the consultation, so ask about them in the same message as your dates. If you want to know what gets paid at each step, the post on what you pay when for a genioplasty consultation goes through it.

If you're also thinking about your nose, the seven days after silicone rhinoplasty, from splint to boarding gate shows how a nose trip's days fall. Whether chin and nose belong in one operation is a question for the consultation.

Lip numbness, swelling and what can follow you home

The common effects are swelling, a tight feeling around the chin, bruising that can drift down into the neck, and numbness of the lower lip and chin. The mental nerve gives the lower lip and chin their feeling, and it leaves the jaw close to where the bone is cut. That's why altered sensation after a sliding genioplasty is common. It usually improves over weeks to months, and in some people part of it stays.

Less often, the incision inside the mouth gets infected, the plate can be felt under the skin, or a small step or asymmetry shows along the lower edge of the jaw. A five-year review of 588 lower-jaw contouring operations, published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open in 2014, lists the complications surgeons track after this kind of surgery. Serious bleeding after jaw bone surgery is rare, but it has been reported in the literature. That is one reason surgery and a flight should never fall on the same day.

Risks and side effects to know

How much you swell and how long the numbness lasts differ from person to person.

Some people should wait or rethink the plan:

• Anyone whose face is still growing, or who has orthodontic treatment ahead
• Anyone whose real problem is the bite, where the jaw itself would need moving. That is a different operation, and I wouldn't plan it as a chin trip.
• Anyone with an active tooth or gum infection
• Smokers, because the incision inside the mouth heals more slowly
• Anyone who is pregnant or breastfeeding
• Anyone taking blood thinners. Say so in your first message.

Once you're home, the plan should already exist. Before you leave Seoul, make sure you have your operative summary, your imaging and a list of your medicines. Before the trip, find a plastic surgeon or an oral and maxillofacial surgeon near home who will see you if needed. Get seen the same day where you are if swelling grows on one side after it had been settling, or if you have a fever, discharge from the incision inside your lip, or any trouble swallowing or breathing.

If braces, an old chin implant or work on your lower teeth is part of your history, put it in your WhatsApp message, with a recent dental X-ray if you have one. Then ask which records you'll take home after surgery, so your doctor at home has something to work from.

Questions to settle before the appointment is confirmed

Before you treat any Korea sliding genioplasty consultation booking appointment as settled, ask these questions. Here is how each one is answered here.

• Who will operate? Which surgeon operated on any individual case in the clinic's case archive isn't published. You confirm your own surgeon at the consultation, and every surgeon's training is listed under their own name, so you can check it before you fly.
• Who looks after the anesthesia? Three board-certified anesthesiologists work here full time. One of them is dedicated to your operation and watches your blood pressure, pulse and breathing until you're awake. They don't operate.
• Will I follow every word? A medical interpreter for your language is provided at no extra charge.
• Do foreigners pay a different fee? No. Foreign patients pay the same surgery fee as Korean patients, and the estimate is given in writing.
• When is the CT taken? Ask whether it falls on the consultation day. The answer tells you how early in the trip the consultation needs to be.
• What do I take home? Ask which records you'll leave with, so your doctor at home sees what was done.

You can request the photo review or an in-person consultation through the English consultation page. If you're still deciding between chin work and other contouring, five things a facial contouring clinic list can't show is a good next read.

One relaxed side profile, a front photo and your travel window are enough to start on WhatsApp. Ask the question your flight depends on: how many days your chin will need before you board. You can ask it before you book anything.

Related pages:

• Facial Contouring surgery at VG Plastic Surgery