The Modern Korean: Looks - Page 25

On March 21 2012 03:15 Inverse1 wrote:
So i'm wondering, to most of the western world a lot of the common attitudes etc that you've outlined will seem pretty odd, unnecessary and in some cases really quite unpleasant, is there anything happening in korea thats moving towards things being more liberal in terms of individuality, looks, female equality etc? Are any of the younger koreans starting to feel like they want to change anything, or are things getting even more firmly set in the 'fit in but be better' mentality that seems to be the general theme in a lot of the culture from what you've said? I feel kind of sorry for a lot of young people in korea, fitting in with the crowd to avoid bullying etc is enough of a problem here in the UK, but it seems like young Koreans who don't fit in well must be very unhappy.
A very informative post anyway it was definitely illuminating so thanks for that! It just seems so strange to me that a country that seems to have so much open progression in terms of technology and culture etc, whilst still maintaining a lot of natural beauty, can be so closed and backward in some of it's social ideology.

On March 21 2012 03:25 Lucumo wrote:

Well, it's pretty much the same for me. Guess I'm glad that I'm not living in Korea. But at least my height and head/body ratio seems perfectly fine(and probably the color of my skin as well).

On March 20 2012 06:42 stephanothegenius wrote:


I couldn't have said it better!

First I thought I was in allkpop.com with all the generalization and stereotypes especially from people that has never lived in Korea and yes this includes Koreans living oversea. To be quite honest, these are stuff you see in red herring and not what I would expect in teamliquid.

This is no different than saying how all americans are fat, lazy, arrogant, and ignorant when in reality most americans are hard working and friendly people like in everywhere else.

As ecstatica said it perfectly, reality is, majority of the population don't to plastic surgery especially males, it's actually quite rare among men. Also, normal Korean people don't bluntly make fun of each other based on their apperance. It's actually opposite since Koreans aren't normally as open minded as westerners in expressing their emotions. They might do it jokingly with their close firends but rarely ever infront of people outside of that circle and this includes co-workers. Maybe in the internet but people will say anything behind a computer.

I'll admit that plastic surgery is much more common among females in Korea but the way the OP presents it, it's over exaggeration. Most common surgery is the simple double eye-lid surgery (which can be equivalent of braces in the states) and most of them don't go beyond that since other surgeries as nose jobs are still considered somewhat dangerous.

Also, keep in mind that the increase numbers of plastic surgeries recently can mostly be contributed to foreign patients that make up to 30-50% depending on the clinics.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-12-26/south-korea-plastic-surgery/52236372/1
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/0323/South-Korea-s-boom-in-medical-tourism

If you check the numbers before the medical tourism boom, S.Korea wasn't that much higher than other developed Asian countries like Japan, Hong Kong, etc.

Sure I'm not denying the fact that Koreans do tend to be little bit more aware of how they look and how they dress but they are nowhere near the superficial shallow racist idiots that look down on anyone with even the slightest dark complexion. With all due respect to whoever wrote the OP I don't think he ever lived a day in Korea. Those are stuff that you see in internet on naver, daum, and nate, and doesn't really represent the people that actually live in South Korea.

Even among the celebrities there are alot of them that haven't went under knife. Nothing more amusing than a self-defeatist attitude that somehow Asians can never look pretty without going under a surgery.



I have nothing against the OP but just want people to know that there is always two-sides of the story. This is coming from someone who was born and raised in S.Korea.

On March 21 2012 05:37 Synwave wrote:
I tried googling this out of curiosity but I just kept getting compression ratios and how do measure "heads" on liquids.
So if this is following art I will assume the head to height ratio is based on the measurement of the head from the chin to the top of the head, is that correct?
I would then divide my total height by that to come up with the ratio?

Can't say I care all that much but I am curious. If I did this right my chin to top of my skull is 8.75 inches and my total height is 72 inches. So my head to height is basically 1:8.22

Did I do that right?

On March 21 2012 05:53 rotinegg wrote:

yup. It's not a familiar concept in the western world; I've only seen it mentioned by artists in youtube videos explaining how to draw the human body accurately.

On March 20 2012 20:38 Wildmoon wrote:
Why Korean care about their appearance that much?