Most Common Plastic Surgery in Korea: What 426 of Our Cases Show

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 operate across eyes, nose, breast, body, anti-aging and facial contouring. When patients abroad ask me what the most common plastic surgery in Korea is, they usually want to know whether their own plan is ordinary or unusual here.

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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

I will not quote a national league table I cannot check. What I can show you is what passes through our operating rooms, counted from the photographs patients agreed to publish, and what people ask me most in consultation.

What our own archive shows, operation by operation

Our public before-and-after archive holds 426 cases. Each case is filed under its main operation, so a patient who had nose and eye surgery together is counted once. I counted them by category for this article.

Two limits on these numbers. They count published photographs, not every operation we perform, because many patients do not consent to publication. And they describe one clinic in Gangnam, not Korea as a whole.

Even so, the pattern matches what I hear in consultation. The nose and the eyes are where most cosmetic surgery Korea trips begin, and they are what most first messages from abroad are about.

Eye surgery: the question I hear most from abroad

If you ask me which operation international patients ask about most, it is the double eyelid. Inside our 126 eye cases, 78 include a double eyelid procedure, 49 include ptosis correction (adjusting the muscle that lifts the lid), 25 involve the lower eyelid or under-eye fat, and 39 are revisions of an earlier eyelid operation.

Those numbers overlap because one patient often has two procedures at once. A crease and ptosis correction together is a frequent pairing, since a crease alone does not open an eye that sits low.

• Non-incisional crease: formed by adhesion without an incision. Recovery is quicker; on a thicker lid the line can loosen.
• Incisional crease: chosen when the crease has to hold. The scar sits inside the fold, but swelling takes longer to settle.
• Lower eyelid: fat and loose skin under the eye looked at together. Removing fat alone can leave a hollow, so we consider repositioning it.

Surgery takes 30 minutes to 2 hours under sedation, stitches come out 3–7 days later, and recovery runs 5–14 days. Our article on double eyelid surgery in Korea goes through method choice in detail.

Rhinoplasty: the largest group in our archive

By photograph count, the nose is the most common Korean plastic surgery we perform. Of 151 nose cases, 48 are revisions and 48 used rib cartilage, which tells you something: a large share of our nose work is not a first operation but a correction of one.

A primary nose usually means raising a low bridge and refining the tip. The method — your own cartilage, an implant, rib cartilage, or breathing surgery in the same plan — is chosen after the nose is examined, with our ENT specialist checking the septum and airway when needed.

Surgery takes 1–3 hours under sedation or general anesthesia. Stitches come out 5–7 days later and recovery takes 7–14 days.

Facial contouring and breast surgery

These two sit close together in our archive, at 52 and 50 cases. They are bigger operations than eyes or nose, under general anesthesia with a one-night stay advised, so they suit people who can give the trip more time.

Facial contouring

Of 52 contouring cases, 25 involve bone — cheekbone, jaw angle or chin — and 18 are chin and jawline liposuction. Bone surgery takes 1.5–4 hours, stitches come out 10–14 days later and recovery runs 14–28 days, which is why the minimum stay is 14 days.

Breast surgery

Augmentation is 41 of our 50 breast cases; the rest are lifts, reductions and male chest surgery. Size and profile are chosen against chest width and tissue thickness, so the same implant looks different on different bodies. Stitches come out 7–10 days after surgery.

The smaller groups: fat grafting, body contouring, facelift

Fat grafting (18 cases), body contouring (15) and facelift (8) appear less often in our archive. They are not lesser operations, and each has a clear group of people it does not suit.

• Fat grafting — not for you if your body weight is too low to harvest enough donor fat, or if you want maximum volume in one session; graft survival varies and a second session may be needed.
• Body contouring — not a weight-loss operation. With severe obesity we advise losing weight first, then consulting.
• Facelift — not the answer when volume loss, rather than sagging, is the main cause; we would look at fat grafting first. Not advised if you have been diagnosed with keloid scarring.

Why "common" should not decide your operation

The most popular plastic surgery in Korea tells you what many people wanted. It does not tell you what your face needs. Someone who asks for a double eyelid may need ptosis correction instead. Someone who asks for a higher bridge may have a nose that cannot safely support it.

If you want to see how results look across categories, our guide to reading Korean plastic surgery before and after photos explains what the time stamp and the angle tell you.

Planning a trip for one of these operations

Your stay is set by the operation, not by the airline. Eye surgery and breast augmentation need at least 7 days; nose surgery 7 days, or 14 when bone is cut or it is a revision; facial contouring and facelift at least 14 days. Our trip planning guide for international patients lays out the days.

An English interpreter is with you through consultation, the design confirmation on the morning of surgery and every follow-up visit. After you fly home, follow-up continues for three months by photograph review with written replies from your surgeon.

On cost, our pricing policy is simple: international patients pay the same surgical fee as Korean patients. There is no foreigner surcharge, and you receive one itemised written quote after consultation, before you decide.

Who should not book any of these yet

Some reasons to wait apply across every category above. I would rather say them now than at the clinic.

• Pregnancy, breastfeeding, or an uncontrolled bleeding, thyroid or cardiovascular condition
• Facial growth not yet complete, for nose and bone surgery
• A trip shorter than the minimum stay for the operation you want
• Smoking you cannot stop around the operation, which affects healing in nose, breast and fat grafting work

You can read more about my background and the operations I perform on my profile page.