Korean Plastic Surgery Essay

For our project, K-POP, we have decided to compare how the digital realm influenced the boom of cosmetic surgery in Korea compared to American plastic surgery, where digital means are a less common tool utilized to increase, accentuate, and bring publicity to this industry. We want to take a deeper look into how Korean pop culture and its technology may be influencing the process one takes to get plastic surgery, such as the advertising it provides for each individual plastic surgery. This is opposite of America, where plastic surgery is more taboo, therefore absent in these spaces. Through this research we are ultimately focusing, emphasizing, and analyzing how the digital realm of each country has recently influenced the plastic surgery industry,

Originally, our project was going to specifically focus on how cell phones apps directly contribute to this correlation, however, after further research we realized that there was very limited studies regarding this area, and the app itself was inaccessible on American phones. We instead decided to branch out this idea to various forms of technology and combine the limited research done in every specific area of technology in relations to cosmetic surgery to completely understand how digital realm as a whole affect this practice. This revision of the study will provide more evidence of this topic, such as prior research or journal articles, that will contribute to its success. It will also better explain how cosmetic surgery is related to, involved with, and dependent on technology as a whole. While we will discuss many differences between digital representations of plastic surgery between Korea and the United States, it is important to also address the similarities, such as the types of technologies used, and how they can influence other industries and

One app called, “Plastic Quote” allows the user to upload photos and digitally augment their appearance through various types of online surgeries to achieve desired appearances. We then looked for American plastic surgery apps and also found quite a few which was quite shocking, but many of the apps were games and were significantly less serious than Korean ones, which have become incorporated into the process of getting plastic surgery. The apps differed significantly in appearance, modes of advertising, its capabilities and purpose. We also learned that there are many reality shows and perpetuations of cosmetic surgery and positive ideas attached to it, through Korean television shows and movies. We then are able to compare this with American’s depictions of plastic surgery, or lack thereof, through its own digital spaces, while also analyzing the difference in ideas that these representations are attached with. Through all of this, it became very clear that apps are not the driving factor in cosmetic surgery in South Korea. It is digital media in general, from a culture’s TV shows, digital advertisements, along with the apps that lead to an increasing income of this market by its simultaneously increasing