‘M-my my ear,’ I stutter. ‘It looks like someone took a bite out of it. I want to have it fixed.’
The first part is true. The second part isn’t. I am happy with my ear. It earned me the nickname Evander Holyfield in high school and, for a guy who wears tweed, glasses and elbow patches on a regular basis, it was the closest I ever came to having a bad-boy image.
The real reason I am here is to understand what you could call the beauty arms race.
Credit 37
Estimates based on statistics from the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery indicate that one in fifty have turned to the knife or the needle in Korea, putting the country in first position on a per capita basis: twenty procedures per thousand people, compared with thirteen per thousand in the US. The UK is not included in these statistics, but data from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons found that 51,140 procedures were carried out in 2015, which would put the UK at around 0.8 procedures per thousand people.
However, it has been suggested that the numbers in Korea may be considerably higher, as procedures which take place at private clinics may not be registered – some reports say that 20 per cent of the female population has had plastic surgery at least once in their lives, while others claim as many as 50 per cent of women under the age of thirty have undergone cosmetic surgery in Seoul.
Whatever the exact number may be, it leaves us with the same question: Why are the numbers so high?
First, with surgery prices in Seoul at around a third of what you would pay in the US, surgery tourists make up a part of the statistic. Package deals are offered, hotels are attached to clinics so clients do not have to walk through the streets in bandages and, indeed, suitcases fill the lobby of the clinic in which I am standing. Second, double-eyelid surgery (an insertion of a crease in the eyelid to make the eye look bigger) is popular here and is a simple procedure which can take as little as fifteen minutes (the former President of Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, had it done in 2005 while in office). Which brings us to reason three: men do it, too, making up 15–20 per cent of the clients.
In the Seoul metro, you may be greeted with cosmetic surgery adverts claiming that ‘Everyone but you has done it.’ And that leads us to the fourth reason. Competition.
Remember the Korean saying, ‘If one cousin buys land, the other cousin gets a stomach ache.’ First, your neighbour bought a new car, then you bought a new car. Now the competition has moved into different arenas: beauty and education.
‘Korea is a very competitive society,’ Yeon-Ho says to me.
He and I have met a couple of times before. The first time was at my office in Copenhagen, when he was doing research for a book on why Denmark does so well in the happiness rankings and what Korea could learn from it. Now we are in Seoul, and we meet in the centre of the city as thousands and thousands of demonstrators protest against President Park over the corruption scandal (which later leads to her being impeached and removed from office).
‘We need to give the Korean students a break from competition. That is why I started the Danish efterskole here.’
Students in South Korea are the most hardworking I have ever met. The ones I speak with start the first school (yes, the first school) at 8 a.m. and finish at 4 p.m., then they go home to eat. The second school can last from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m., and can be lessons from a private tutor or a hagwons (a for-profit private cram school). Three quarters of students attend such a ‘second school’. Hagwons and private tutors are big business and serve to accelerate the academic arms race to get into one of the three most prestigious universities in South Korea – Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University (also known as SKY) – and subsequently on the pathway to a job in one of the top companies.
The exam that determines which university you go to is obviously a big deal and, when it takes place, everything seems to revolve around it. The country’s stock market opens an hour later and office hours are changed to reduce morning traffic so students do not risk being delayed. According to National Statistics Korea, more than half of children between the ages of fifteen and nineteen who are suicidal give ‘academic performance and college entrance’ as a reason. In 2008, the competition became so fierce that the government put a curfew on hagwons and private tutoring: No more school after 10 p.m. Citizens were paid bounties to turn in anyone who violated the rule; patrols controlled hagwons and made raids and busts. ‘Everybody be cool – this is a police raid: put down your books!’
It is hard to argue with Yeon-Ho’s point about giving the students a break, and that is why the first thing he took back to Korea from Denmark was the concept of an efterskole.
His dream for the school is to give the students the experience of being a small society where they take responsibility for their own life. Where they experience a sense of community and happiness and focus on things other than studying for an exam. Where they learn to cooperate rather than compete.
‘That is why I tell the students, if something does not go according to plan, you will still succeed in your stay, because you will learn a great deal on the way. By being in company with yourself and with each other – and by being happy.’
This way of raising kids puts greater focus on togetherness, trust, empathy and cooperation. In short, social skills. The aim is not to create a human robot with the highest possible efficiency but to shape a person who understands and helps other people.
TIGER MUMS OR ELEPHANT MUMS
Not everyone agrees with the educational system in Denmark or the way Danish kids are raised. In 2011, the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother appeared to be the anti-manifesto to the Danish way of bringing up children.
The book seemed to advocate putting on the pressure to achieve academic excellence, restrictions or outright bans on extracurricular and social activities like sleepovers (so, essentially, an embargo on fun) and punishment and the embedding of a feeling of shame if the kids failed to live up to their parents’ high expectations.
In 2013, a study by Professor Su Yeong Kim, an associate professor in human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, shed light on the effect of tiger-mumness. According to Professor Kim, tiger cubs got worse grades, felt more depressed and more alienated from their parents than the kids of parents whom their kids characterized as ‘supportive’ or ‘easy-going’.
A few years after the Tiger mother’s battle hymn, the author, Chua – the original tiger mum – and her husband were asked in the course of an interview with the Guardian about why some cultural groups get ahead in the US. Chua explained that their approach had been to look at measures of income in the US census, but pointed out that this was a ‘very materialistic sense of success, but we’re not saying this is the only way – this doesn’t mean happiness, you know?’ Her husband also had some concerns about high demands being placed on people.
‘I know that I am unhappier,’ he said, ‘because I always feel like whatever I’ve done is not good enough. It doesn’t matter what I do – so that’s painful, and I worry that I’ve communicated that to my kids.’