Korean Beauty and Miss Korea

After the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948, South Korea has established impressive economic progress. Today, the rights of women in Korea are more encouraged in the country, and they play extensive roles in a wide variety of fields, including education, sports, law, and engineering. However, there is still a long way to go for gender equality due to its deeply rooted Confucian heritage which limits women’s growth in society and even impacts Korean beauty standards .

Korean Beauty

Traditional Beauty Ideology

Korean beauty is closely related to its historical philosophy. The way women think and behave is naturally affected by the patriarchal ideology , which encompasses beliefs that beautiful appearances promise women power. Traditionally, their feminine beauty ideal consisted of being moderately plump with fair skin, cultivated mannerisms, and modesty, with a cultural emphasis on inner-beauty. Aesthetic beauty values were also emphasized such as naturalism, pureness, elegance and clarity.

Industrialization and Westernization

One of Korea's most popular girl groups, Girls Generation

Since Korean industrialization and westernization between 1960 and 1990, Western beauty standards have been imported and replaced the Korean ideal of beauty. Additionally, Korean pop culture has created a new visual economy and become viral on Korean social website. This has resulted in stimulating women’s interest in pursuing a transformation of facial feature similar to the K-pop entertainers.

The Plastic Surgery Capital of the World

Korea is the plastic surgery capital.

Today, South Korea has become a hotbed of cosmetic innovations and trends. The country records the highest number of plastic surgery per capita in the world . Seven out of 10 women in Korea would choose to have plastic surgery if they could afford it, as a single procedure, such as double eyelid surgery or rhinoplasty can completely change their lives. It serves women's empowerment, as well as offering advantages in employment or marriage, where facial beauty is often considered more valuable than academic skills in romantic relationships and job markets

Women in Korea

Korean Job Markets

Due to South Korea's rapid economic growth, the country has become a hyper-competitive society. Also, with Korea’s high population density—approximately 519. 3 per square kilometre as opposed to Canada’s population density of 3.94 people per square kilometre—the society is crowded and everyone can easily look at each other in the face. Thus, the excessive competition produces “Spec Craze”; Spec is an abbreviation for the term specification. It refers to a list of certifications that applicants add on their resumes to impress recruiters. The eight main Specs are educational background, GPA, official English exam score, overseas experience, awards, licenses, volunteering, and internship experiences However, as most students acquire all the basic specs, candidates seek for alternative and special specs to appeal themselves as being more talented and superior than the others.

Pressure on Women

Women in South Korea especially feel more pressure when it comes to submitting resume. Given that most Korean companies are male-dominated, the attractiveness and aesthetically pleasing looks of women job seekers are particularly significant. Korean job markets even require applicants to include photos, height, and weight on their resumes, making plastic surgery a perceived necessity for women as both a means of weapon and a Spec to enter the economic field. An online recruitment website, saramin reported that 68.3% of applicants admitted to photoshopping their resume photos, while 28.5 percent said they were even willing to undergo cosmetic surgery if it would help them land a job.

Miss Korea

Miss Korea logo

The complexity of Korean beauty components compels job seekers to broaden their perspectives of Specs, leading some women to aspire to be beauty queens at Miss Korea, South Korea’s representative beauty pageant.

When the first Miss Korea took place in the capital city of Seoul in 1957, it was only four years after the Korean War. The sponsoring organizations aimed to build it as a large-scale festival to give hope to a war-stricken people and proclaim to the world that Korea was rising back again. In the early 1980s, with the introduction of colour television and remarkable development of broadcasting industries , many local entertainment businesses sought for pretty women who would become TV stars. Young girls who were uniquely beautiful or wanted to be actresses lined up on Miss Korea stage. A majority of Korean actresses who are now in the 40s or 50s started off as pageant contestants and are still active in show business.

Role of Miss Korea

Over the last 60 years, the Miss Korea judging criteria have changed, as have the participants’ beliefs of the beauty pageant itself. Miss Korea has now become one of the Specs for job applicants. Starting from the 21st century, candidates with more Specs or higher education backgrounds register for the beauty contest, because their acquired Specs are not competitive enough in the employment process.

Lee Bo-young, a popular Korean drama actress, discussed her beauty pageant story on a talk show, Healing Camp, Aren't You Happy in 2013. She said, I auditioned for it because I heard it’s easy to get a job when you’re a Miss Korea. I wanted to put on the resume that I had won Miss Korea because I felt like I was left alone in the society

Additionally, according to the interviews with the Miss Korea 2015 candidates, the contest is highly regarded as a Spec and the gateway to achieving their prospective goals among the girls. However, they don’t necessarily target the marriage markets or conform to the patriarchal norm.

Feminist Issues

Plastic Surgery

Contestants of Miss Korea 2013 have similar features.

The images of Miss Korea 2013 contestants without photoshop.

In April 2013, pictures of the Miss Korea 2013 contestants were posted on a Japanese blog, then on Reddit, and then in national and international newspapers. According to the photos, all the contestants have Westernized characteristics of being tall and thin, with big eyes, a perfectly angled nose, a small chin, and long legs . This sparked controversy on social media, with claims that many of the candidates have shared an apparent similarity due to the same plastic procedures they had undergone, and the term Miss Plastic Korea was dubbed as well. Jezebel pointed out that Korea’s uniformed beauty and plastic surgery obsession are largely influenced by patriarchal oppression. However, the Miss Korea organization quickly posted pictures of contestants with no photoshops done and responded that their original profile pictures were photoshopped, and the contestants didn’t undergo any medical procedures.

Proof of Natural Beauty

This year on July 8th, Miss Korea celebrated its 60th anniversary. The rule of the competition has maintained the age range and marital status. Pageant contestants have been encouraged to show their own natural beauty, but restrictions have never been placed on plastic surgery.

In order to terminate negative opinions about Korean women's uniformed look, Miss Korea 2016 organization conducted contestants’ medical records and scanned four contestants’ bodies through Computed Tomography (CT) for more accurate examinations. This year’s beauty queen, Jin-Sol Kim participated the procedure as well. The entire process, from the diagnostic imaging test to interviews with plastic surgeons and beauty contestants, were videotaped to demonstrate that the Korean beauty pageant emphasizes women's natural beauty rather than plastic beauty. The video is now published on Youtube:

Korean Feminist Organization

The most recent article about Korean Feminist movements, discusses an in-depth analysis of Korea’s largest feminist nonprofit organization with more than nine thousand members, Yosong Minuhoe (한국여성민우회), known in English as Korean Womenlink.

According to the author, just a couple of months after the Miss Korea photos went viral online, Womenlink held a forum called, “Apkujeong Station Exit #4: Let’s Talk About It.” The meaning behind the title is that the majority of patients access plastic surgery clinics through Apkujeong station Exit #4 with half of them located in the Gangnam District in Seoul. Specialists from diverse areas, education, media, law, architechture provided insights into plastic surgery consumption as a social issue. However, the panel had a hard time reaching any unified conclusions due to its complex relationships with other factors such as K-Pop culture, media, medical technology, etc.

Members believe that beauty is biologically driven; the human propensity to favor beauty is biological, similar to food triggers for hungry people and alcohol triggers for alcoholics. In addition, combining beauty with Korea’s patriarchal and Confucian ideology ultimately shift women’s relationships to their own bodies. According to Kim Sang-hui, executive director of Womenlink, “In traditional Korean society, a woman’s body was completely controlled by male-oriented society, especially because of the ideology of staying a virgin, which was a strict controlling tool of women’s bodies. But now, lookism has replaced that ideology.” Today, women who spend time and money in their skin and body are described as successful in self-management and potential in love relationships and job markets. In other words, women who don’t choose to invest in themselves confront social discrimination which is an ideological phenomenon influenced by digital media. Thus, Womenlink concludes that the “problem is not surgery” but rather “the media broadcasting and promoting what surgeries celebrities have had”. As the whole society acknowledges the power of lookism, media controls the pressures on female consumers and reform their beauty ideals. Therefore, Womenlink members hope to encourage Korean women to distance themselves from the media's perspective of beauty and replace plastic surgery with self-love and self-compassion.