한류 (Hanryu) i.e. The Korean Wave refers to the increase in global popularity of the South Korean culture. This phenomenon first started with spread of interest in Korean pop culture (K-pop), Korean dramas (K-dramas), and Korean reality shows and is currently peaking due to the Korean beauty (K-beauty) industry. People all around the world are purchasing and using K-beauty products, and are inculcating K-beauty regimens into their everyday lives. The K-beauty industry is very well known for their wide variety of products for literally anything you can think of, and is also very well know for their long beauty regimens which involve at least 10 steps and take at least 2 hrs to complete. Why is the K-beauty industry so extensive? The answer to this question lies within the Korean beauty standards. Out of everything that South Korea is known for, it is most infamous for its beauty standards. “I am a Korean American and if there’s anything about Korean culture that I am most familiar with, it’s the beauty standard,” wrote Karin Cho in her Medium article about South Korean beauty standards.
In South Korea, looking put-together is highly prioritised, and for women in South Korea, ‘looking put together’ means having pale flawless youthful skin, double eyelids, large eyes, straight eyebrows, a slim pointed nose, a sharp v-shape jawline, perfectly aligned white teeth, a small face, long hair, a thin waist, wide pelvis, skinny legs and arms, and more. A year ago in November of 2018, a branch of the coffee shop franchise Yogerpresso fired a woman on her first day after she showed up with short hair and no makeup. This is the beauty standard that women in South Korea are held to at all times, and in a conformist and patriarchal society like South Korea, it’s hard to live without giving into them. It is also hard to live up to these ridiculously high standards for beauty so many Korean women resort to undergoing risky and expensive cosmetic surgeries and using beauty products that can supposedly help them attain these standards.
South Korean has the highest rate of plastic surgeries per capita in the world. One in three South Korean women have undergone some sort of cosmetic surgery between the ages of 19 and 29. The most popular cosmetic surgery is a blepharoplasty, or double-eyelid surgery, where they insert a crease in the eyelid to make the eye look bigger and to make a monolid look like a double eyelid. The two other popular procedure are rhinoplasty, where they modify the nasal cartilage and bones to make the nose look more appealing (in this case “appealing” means slimmer and pointed), and glutathione injections, which slows pigmentation in the skin, thus giving a fairer skin tone. These surgeries, like any other surgeries, are expensive. So, the K-beauty industry–which is dedicated to providing all women with everything they need to look the way they’re expected to–have come up with a wide variety of products to be used by women who cannot afford cosmetic surgeries. These products include, but are not limited to, double eyelid tape that helps create the illusion of a crease in the eyelid, V-line masks that promise to slim puffy cheeks or angular jawlines, hair markers created to hide high hairlines and widow’s peaks, body tints for rouging ashy knees, elbows, and nipples, and DIY home facelifts that come in small vials of serum containing micro needles. Although the motivation behind the extensiveness of K-beauty products is deeply rooted in painfully high standards of beauty set for South Korean women, the quality and effectiveness of these products is irrefutable, and hence K-beauty has been such a big hit worldwide.
Comments
I've been into K-pop for a long time before K-beauty got huge in the U.S. Later when I looked into K-beauty products, I did not question their effectiveness because of the immense amount of beauty I had been exposed to through dramas and idols in music videos. The standard is incredibly high to the point where it gets very scary. I did a research project on body image in South Korea and the amount of "fat-shaming" that goes on is appalling. There is so much pressure on mostly women but more recently men as well to fit this extreme standard of beauty. It's truly an incredible phenomenon.
Love your post! When I traveled to Korean, I found out surprisingly that almost every girl on the street wears similar makeup and outfits. I think the Korean beauty standards post too much limitation on women and even men. Although those girls may not really like those similar clothes or makeups, they really have little choice and too much peer pressure. I hope one day, everyone could be brave enough to express their true selves.
This is a great cultural post. I totally agree with what you had to say about the beauty standard of Korean culture. Growing up and watching Korean variety shows, I understand how much beauty standards have on Korean people. It saddens me since this is what causes people such as idols to have such low self-esteem because they rely so much on what other people have to say about them.
Great post. I always knew South Korea was notorious for its cosmetic surgeries, but I didn't know the detailed statistics that you provided in your post. In my opinion, those standards cross international boundaries as many Koreans in the United States are pressured to some degree to meet these standards. I think this is caused by watching Korean television shows and dramas.
I definitely agree that Korean beauty standards are really restrictive and don't allow for a lot of variety in Korea. I also think that a lot of Korean beauty standards come from the desire to look more Western, such as having pale skin and large eyes with double eyelids. I also think that because K-Pop is so popular nowadays, everyone wants to look like their favorite celebrity, who has probably had a lot of cosmetic work done.
Great post! I agree with you that the Korean beauty standards are a huge issue in Korea. There is this huge pressure on Koreans to look a certain way. I even know Korean Americans who feel this pressure, so these Korean beauty standards don't only exist in Korea. I wonder if these standards will ever change and what it would take to change them.