SO GOES WITH PLASTIC SURGERY, S KOREA HAS BECOME THE WORLD’S PLASTIC SURGERY CAPITAL WITH 440, 582 OPERATIONS IN A YEAR–AND IT ALL STARTED WITH THE SUPERIOR PALPABRAL FOLD OR DOUBLE EYELID OPERATION THAT BEGAN IN THE 1950S

…….In today’s Korea, where 20 percent of the female population has had plastic surgery at least once in their lives, the public rarely associates its ever-booming cosmetic surgery industry with race or the nation’s turbulent modern history.
“I would get serious complaints if I performed the procedure and the Korean patient gets a crease like the one of a Caucasian person. What people want is a natural crease that is suited to Asian faces,” said Seoul-based plastic surgeon Na Min-hwa, who has been performing the procedure for the past 15 years. “The whole idea that undergoing this surgery is an attempt to look white is absurd.”
A number of studies, however, have suggested that the introduction of the double-eyelid surgery to the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s was closely related to racism and the U.S. military agenda, and that legacy still carries a significance today.
Most popular plastic surgery in the world
With or without Tyra Banks’ rant, the double-eyelid operation has evolved into an even more popular procedure in Asia and the rest of the world in recent years.
According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the procedure was the most-performed plastic surgery worldwide last year. Some 1.43 million individuals underwent the procedure, including Asian-Americans, accounting for 14.8 percent of all cosmetic surgery performed across the globe in 2014. South Korea, meanwhile, performed the fourth-most cosmetic surgical procedures in the world last year.
Among the well-known Korean figures who have had the procedure are former President Roh Moo-hyun and veteran singer Patti Kim.
The surgery was first developed and performed in Korea by Dr. D. Ralph Millard, an American military plastic surgeon who was stationed in the country during the Korean War (1950-53). Among the very first Koreans who received the particular procedure were Korean war brides who married American soldiers.
It is estimated that 50 percent of Asians have naturally creased eyes. However, the preference for double eyelids among Asians today is not “inherent, natural or random,” according to scholar Taeyon Kim.
“This preference has an historical development that is shaped by the motives of the American Cold War that produced the Asian as an ambivalent threat that needed to be contained and domesticated,” Kim wrote in her 2005 Ph.D. dissertation submitted to Bowling Green State University.
'Superior palpebral fold'
Although it is believed that double eyelid surgery was first introduced in late 19th-century Japan, it was during the Korean War that the operation became popular in Asia, according to Kim’s research.
According to Kim, Millard was stationed in Korea during the war as part of an American public relations campaign to show “American’s benevolent face to the Koreans.” On top of developing and performing double eyelid surgery ― which was the alteration of “Oriental” features to “Occidental” ― he was also committed to serving those who were severely injured on the battlefield and in need of surgical reconstruction.

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