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How to plan consultations and how long you should stay in Korea Many people go to Korea on a tight schedule in which they need to squeeze their consultations, decide and still spare enough time to have the surgery and complete their after care appointments. These are important factors and tips to maximize your time. Guideline: Consult 3 Clinics/Day 3 appointments per day is a general rule of thumb and space out start times by at least 2 hours, but spacing out by 3 hour buffer is recomended. Clinics Hours Monday to Friday 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM (on average) Saturdays are 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM (on average) Sundays (closed) Example Schedule Clinic A: 09:30 AM Clinic B: 12:30 AM LUNCH Clinic C : 14:30 PM AFTERNOON/ EVENING: Research, Analyze and Decide Example Consultation Process A typical consultation time looks like this for seeing a single surgeon. If you are seeing more than one surgeon at a clinic (Nose Surgeon + Eye Surgeon + Contouring Surgeon) add an extra 30 minutes per additional surgeon 20 minutes: Hotel to clinic commute time 15 minutes: Clinic check in / paperwork 05 minutes Photos & X-Rays 15 minutes coordinator consultation 15 minutes wait time to see surgeon 15 minutes surgeon consultation 20 minutes to coordinator pricing, scheduling and bargaining 15 minutes to commute to next appointment Average Total Time: 2 Hours to complete the appointment and arrive at the next one (if you see more than one surgeon at a clinic add an additional 30 minutes per surgeon). Know your treatment course/timeline: Knowing how long it takes to finish your aftercare and follow ups is an important variable to plan your stay time. For example rhinoplasty requires 6 to 7 days. Factor Surgery Slot Float Time Surgery float is the time spent waiting for your surgery day to arrive once you made your decision. Always ask about the available dates for surgery at the end of your consultation. Sometimes your surgery can start the same day, next day, or you may have to wait as long as one week or more. Float times increase if it's a peak season (Winter/Spring) or it's a popular clinic or high demand surgeon TIPS: Be on time. Don't be rude to other patients and staff by showing up late. Don't flake, bad Karma. Be nice, your prices can be a reflection of your attitude and difficulty or ease to manage. Don't be a hero and stack too many appointments Don't have appointments the day you land in Korea Get familiar with the clinic location. Download Naver Maps App and virtually visit the clinic. Have the clinics address in Korean and take taxis that are facing the direction of your next appointment (if it's not walking distance) Keep max clinic number to 5. After 5 you will have diminishing marginal returns. Advice will get confusing and conflicting. You will waste time and energy.

Now I'll talk about my eye surgery consults. I went to MVP, Namu and Naturalism in that order. 1) MVP MVP (Dr Seo) Consult duration coupled with nose consult: about 25mins MVP is where I did my primary DES hence I went back for a review since I am 6 months post op, and also to ask Dr Seo about revision since I felt my crease is hooded over. Dr Seo assessed my eyes and told me that if i wanted revision to make my crease more obvious while still maintaining a tapered crease, he will remove a but more skin to reveal more of my crease. This will be done by re-opening my existing creaseline. He and my consultant Elizabeth did tell me that I cannot remove too much skin or else I won't be able to close my eyes fully, since pre-op I already did not have fully closed eyelids (there was a slight gap when I closed my eyes back pre-DES), and also due to my natural eye socket shape and low distance between my brows and eyes, too high a crease and too much skin removal is not suitable for me. If I wanted a higher crease line from the one I have currently, the new crease will end up parallel but a bit higher, and Dr also said he will cut along the same incision line to increase the size of crease. Dr did not mention i needed any ptosis correction nor epicanthoplasty, just skin removal. Dr Seo advised me to wait for longer before doing revision to see how much my eyelid skin has stretched out, which may help the scar on the inner corner of my right eye too. Since that was also my concern - whether the scar is a permanent keloid formation. He told me the scar will flatten and smoothen out with more time. Recovery time would be the same or a little bit longer from primary DES, which is about a week. Stitch removal done at 5 days post op. Like my primary surgery, incisional DES revision will be done under local anaesthesia and twilight sedation. Since I did my primary surgery at MVP, the revision would be done for free and I only have to pay for anaesthesia cost of 300,000 won. Medications, post op care of cleaning, deswelling laser and vitamin drips are included into the cost. And this revision period is valid for 2 years. 2) Namu Namu (Dr Joung Soo Woo) Consult duration coupled with nose consult: about 25mins Dr Joung advised that if I wanted a more obvious crease, he will redo my creaseline by cutting a bit higher and removing abit of skin. It'll also be done full incisional and he said my incision line from primary surgery will still remain but not be very obvious. The new crease will still be an in-out tapered fold. Epicanthoplasty was recommended to me to open up and remove abit of mongolian fold, and ptosis correction for both eyes to balance out my eyes. Dr says my right eye opening power is a bit weaker hence the inner corner eyelid scar seems obvious. I asked about the scar and he told me that it will soften, but my right eye crease seems a bit loosened due to the scar. Like Dr Seo at MVP, Dr Joung said I cannot remove too much skin or go too high a crease or else I cannot close my eyes, because structurally I don't have a lot of eyelid space between brows, and also because of my eye socket bone. A much higher crease will be too close to my socket bone which will look unnatural and ugly. Dr was frank with me and said that due to my eye structure, I will still have some skin covering over even with revision. In fact, Dr was very honest and told me that he didn't think my case is that bad that it seriously needs revision so he was just providing a neutral opinion about revision surgery and the choice to revise is up to me. Claire the consultant (Linda wasn't around when I went so they assigned me Claire instead) also told me that Dr Joung is a doctor who is very honest with patients about what he thinks they do and don't need for surgery. Stitch removal will be done 1 week post op. Cost for revision with all procedures (epi, ptosis and des) will be 3 mil won, and no need to pay tax, and some discount is possible in exchange for photos of my eyes. I didn't ask about aftercare provided but I suppose it should be the same that other girls who went to Namu have received, the deswelling laser/shots etc. As I earlier mentioned, I was surprised that my consult with Dr Joung for eyes lasted a bit longer than for nose. 3) Naturalism Naturalism (Dr Jung Minsoo) Consult duration: about 20mins, went with a translator I initially wanted to consult with Dr Go Eung Yeol, one of the head doctors who specializes in eyelid surgery but unfortunately he was on vacation. Hence, I decided to book an appointment to consult with Dr Jung after the clinic's recommendation for an alternative doctor for eyes, and also after I saw a korean girl's DES result in a korean Kakao chatroom, which was done by Dr Jung and looked good to me. Dr Jung was pretty quiet when he came to the consultation room and I guess he wasn't expecting to a foreign patient to book an appointment with him for consultation since he looked a bit puzzled at first. But he was nice enough and was honest and straight to the point about my options for revision. Even though he isn't a head doctor at the clinic and he was the youngest doctor out of all the surgeons I had consulted (perhaps in his mid 30s?), I felt he was very professional in his honest opinions regarding revision and he seemed to know his stuff really well. Dr Jung assessed my eyelids and told me that my eyelids have limitation as to how much bigger my crease can be, as I have thick skin. My hooded lids now is due to thick skin and not fat. In addition, I am also limited by the low eyelid space between my eyelids and brows, which echoes MVP and Namu's opinions. Dr Jung drew out on paper and presented me 2 options for revision surgery to get a more obvious crease. 1st option was to revise my crease by cutting a higher line above my existing one, but then I will have 2 scars visible after that. 2nd option was to reopen my existing crease and cut away a bit more skin but not too much because i don't have much to cut away or else I cannot close my eyes properly permanently (same as MVP's advice). Dr recommended me to go for the 2nd option as going for the 1st option may cause me to end up with sausage eyes or lids still hooding over due to my skin. Dr also suggest to do ptosis correction as he said I looked a bit sleepy eyed, and epicanthoplasty to remove the a bit of the mongolian fold and open up inner corner a bit so my crease appears a little more prominent as an in-out fold. During the revision, Dr said he will tighten up the right side where there is the scar as it appears loose due to the scar tissue, and remove the scar tissue a bit. Because I am prone to scarring, the same problem of raised scar could recur. Like what the other 2 clinics said, Dr Jung told me that even with revision to make the crease more visible, there is chance that my skin may hood over again in future due to my thick eyelid skin. Due to my natural eye shape, I also cannot have too high a crease because it will look unnatural and sausage-like on me. Stitches removal done at 1 week post op. Price was 5.17 mil won cash price for all procedures (epi, ptosis and revision DES). Price is inclusive of medications and aftercare of deswelling treatments. All in all, for eye consults, the doctors had the same opinion that I needed to remove a bit more skin to make my crease more visible, and that I cannot go for too high creases due to my eye socket limitations.