In South Korea, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, masks have become the standard for people to go out. Many South Koreans take the opportunity to arrange cosmetic surgery projects, so that masks can be used to cover up after surgery, and it is not easy to be seen by others even if they go out.
This also made South Korea’s medical beauty industry achieve good results last year.
According to Reuters on the 4th, Liu Hanna, a 20-year-old female college student, spent most of her online classes at home last year and had a rhinoplasty operation in the middle of last month.
The decisive factor that prompted her to make this arrangement is that longer stay at home helps her recovery and wearing a mask outside will not attract attention.
In addition, considering that South Korean people are about to start vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, people may not need to wear masks in the future, she believes that this is a good time for cosmetic surgery.
South Korean female college student Yoo Hannah: I think maybe people need to wear masks now, which is the best time for plastic surgery.
Because after the New Year in 2021, as more and more Koreans start to vaccinate, people may no longer need to wear masks.
Liu Hanna’s ideas are quite representative in South Korea and have also become the driving force for the prosperity of South Korea’s medical beauty industry last year. According to data from South Korea’s largest medical beauty platform, the number of customer consultations in 2020 was 1 million, doubling from 2019.
South Korea’s medical beauty industry is valued at 10.7 billion US dollars in 2020, equivalent to about 69.2 billion yuan, an increase of 9.2% over the previous year. This year, it is expected to reach 11.8 billion US dollars, or about 76.3 billion yuan.
According to some cosmetic surgeons, customers seem to be more interested in all facial beauty projects.
Whether masks can be covered or not, the number of surgical or non-surgical medical beauty consultations received by clinics involving eyes, eyebrows, bridges of nose and forehead areas has increased.
South Korean plastic surgeon Shin Sang-ho: I feel that this is a kind of revenge consumption, and I feel that some customers hope to vent the depression brought about by the epidemic through medical hairdressing.
Some customers originally only did one project, but now they will choose to do two or three projects.
However, at present, affected by the third wave of epidemic in South Korea, many customers have temporarily cancelled medical beauty consultation appointments or postponed surgery.
