South Koreans' apparent fascination with cosmetic surgery is often reported in both Asia and the West, especially due to its anomalous rate of use by both women and men. Although there is a dearth of reliable data on the number of people who choose to undergo cosmetic surgery in South Korea, the statistics are substantial. Estimates range from 15 to 30 percent of all South Koreans have undergone some method of plastic surgery, statistics for certain age groups of women are typically higher (Kim, 2010). This is obviously a huge social problem, which defies simplistic explanations and leaves academics and politicians in Korea perplexed. What is emerging from this research is that this question defies simplistic explanations, and in many ways we have only begun to understand the multiple discourses that inform people's decisions to engage in cosmetic surgery in Korea. One is certainly curious to know what causes this country's apparent fascination with aesthetics. The current investigation of South Korean plastic surgery typically structures it as a women's issue and locates it in women's desire to adapt to male controlling organizations in order to increase their chances of thriving within such a system. Some researchers argue that women's desire for cosmetic surgery is an extension of the usual premodern discourse of “virtuous femininity” that required upper-class women to adhere to strict neo-Confucian decorum (Epstein, 2007). While males were destined to excel in everything related to the external world, to become better men, females were bound to the intrinsic, as women's achievements were mainly decided in the middle of the paper. .Law Review Association, 100(8), 2035-2052.Blum, V. (2005). Becoming the other woman: the psychic drama of cosmetic surgery. AJournal of Women Studies, 26(2), 104-131. Cullen, L.T. (2002), "Changing Faces", Time, 5 August, pp.16-19. Epstein, M. (2007). Linked by convention: female writing and the female voice in eighteenth-century China. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 26(1), 97-105Kim, T. (2003). Neo-Confucian body techniques: Women's bodies in Korean consumer society. Body and Society, 9(2), 97-113.Kim, Y. (2010). Female individualization?: Transnational mobility and media consumption of Asian women. Media Culture Society, 32(25).Millman, M. (1980). Such a cute face. New York, NY: Norton.Partridge, J. (1996). Face values'. Health Education, 3(2), 30-33.Savage, E. (2011). The westernization of Asian beauty. Eureka Street, 21(2), 22-23.