yongyongx

I had Acculift on 3 areas. I think it wasn’t under my chin, my jawline, and my zygoma area.

Also, the incision for Acculift is under your ear, so it’s not noticeable at all.

 

I think you will have an easier time mentally. I’ve never lived or traveled entirely alone prior to this, and I’ve always had someone (my mom and now bf lol) taking care of me when I was sick.

Nonetheless, company always helps! Make sure you have a supportive network who you can video / call / text, and what really helped me was meeting and hanging out with other girls from English speaking countries who were also undergoing plastic surgery.

 

Hello, I am currently 14 days post op and wanted to share my experience getting plastic surgery in Korea. I ended up getting zygoma, genioplasty, and acculift at View Plastic Surgery.


Consultations - Before coming to Korea, View was my first choice based on previous patient’s results I’ve seen from the plastic surgery Kakao chats. I considered The Face Dental (TFD) as well, but I ended up backing out because they didn’t have the face lipo I wanted. I was going to go to a face-to-face consult with Gyalumhan, but the scheduling didn’t work out well. Overall, after my View consult, I was satisfied enough to go with them without consulting face-to-face with other clinics. I felt that I had to go to more consultations since everyone goes to at least 3, but I was lazy. There was a degree of trust I had in View, especially with the no accidents in 15 years.


I requested to see and saw Dr. Lee Dong Chan for facial contouring (FC). He recommended acculift, genioplasty, zygoma, and mandible jaw reduction. I expressed my concern on how I didn’t feel that my jaw was prominent enough to be shaved, and he agreed that I may have my desired results without jaw shaving. I also consulted about rhinoplasty, but I knew I wasn’t going to get it this trip because it would have been too strenuous for me personally. I liked how Dr. Lee Dong Chan wasn’t too pushy about the procedures. He listened intently to my concerns and even asked for my ideal pictures. After my face-to-face consultation and both the doctor and clinic’s recommendation, I felt safe enough to put my deposit. Because View is getting very busy, my surgery had to be scheduled a week after my consultation. That was fine with me because I planned enough time. If you are 80% set on View, you should highly consider placing a deposit before coming to Korea, especially during busy season.


Preparation - After I placed my deposit with View, Stacey, the consultant, thoroughly explained to me how to take care of myself after surgery (i.e. what to eat, what to avoid, what to expect after surgery, etc…). Even though I had done a lot of research about post-surgery care, I was really appreciative that Stacey had gone over it with me and even gave me a physical list of post-care instructions.


To prepare for recovery, I brought advil (ended up not using), Vitamin C, scar cream, and Bromleain. In Korea, I purchased a small bottle of Micellar water, Q tips, cotton pads, instant porridge, face mask (to cover the bottom half of my face), a hat, 2 condiment bottles (Daiso), and 1 small mason jar (Daiso). The condiment bottles were really useful, especially since you can barely open your mouth for a good 5 days. I went out A LOT 5 days after surgery, so I just put the gargle solution in a condiment bottle and carried a small mason jar so that I can spit the solution in it (Note: after FC, you have to rinse your mouth with gargle solution after about every 2 hours to prevent infection with your mouth stitches).


Day 0 (Thursday) - Before surgery, I was led up to the recovery room and placed my stuff inside. The recovery room is super nice. The best part is the bed is heated. Your body will feel super cold after general anesthesia, so having a heated bed was wonderful. I met with Dr. Lee Dong Chan and my Acculift doctor to confirm the surgeries and express my concerns. Then, due to unforeseen circumstances, I had to wait 2 extra hours before surgery. I was okay with this because I had nothing to do anyway, and I didn’t want them to rush on another patient. I took a nap while waiting.


I was super nervous, but as soon as they stuck a needle in me, I was knocked out. I woke up feeling super nauseous, and I kept dry heaving. I fasted for 24 hours with no food or water (I think they tell you to fast for about 8 hours) because I really didn’t want to vomit. I ended up not vomiting but I felt nauseous. A lot of people say that their throat felt like **** afterwards, but I felt fine. I needed to stay awake for 1 hour, but I just wanted to sleep. After about 1.5 hours, the nurse asked me to walk and grab some water. She also provided me with some pumpkin juice. I drank a tiny sip of water and tried to walk as little as possible because I knew that I would’ve thrown up if I did any more. Overall, it wasn’t too horrible. My right hand ended up super swollen from the IV, but that subdued after 3 days.


I was so thankful the night nurse was there. She would check up on me and my IV every couple of hours, and that put my mind at ease. It was nice that she spoke English so I could have expressed my concerns to her if there were any.


Day 1 (Friday) - I got discharged from the clinic. A group of consultants met me in the morning and provided me with an after-care package. They explained to me basically what Stacey had told me before, but it was nice to have a refresher. The after-care package contained a V-line band, face masks, 2 bottles of gargle solution, 2 ice packs, and pumpkin juice. Dr. Lee Dong Chan also came in to check on me before I left the recovery room.


After checking out of the recovery room, I was escorted to the pharmacy to obtain my prescription. The consultants explained to me how often to take each pill and what each of them were. I was really dizzy, so I’m really thankful that the consultants helped me go to the pharmacy. They also called a taxi for me afterwards, and helped me with my luggage. The care I received from View right after my surgery was amazing. I was really not capable to do much after surgery, and View successfully helped me to my hotel.


I arrived at my hotel at noon, and for the rest of the day, I just dozed in and out of sleep. Swelling wasn’t too bad, and I just had discomfort from the headband. I took 1 painkiller prescribed from View that night. I couldn’t even play on my phone, watch TV, or move around too much because I felt so nauseous. I drank 1 pumpkin juice.


Day 2 (Saturday)- I finally felt well enough to use my phone / laptop. I binged watched Lucifer the entire season 4 of Lucifer and didn’t go out the entire day. I drank 2 pumpkin juices. I felt hungry but felt too weak (I think I was just mentally weak lol) to walk out. Swelling and pain increased, but I didn’t take any painkillers


I was mentally unstable. I cried to my friends on why I went under the knife because I was in so much discomfort. A large part of this was because I was alone, so I felt really lonely and sad.


Day 3 (Sunday) - I walked out for 15 minutes and bought some porridge. I finished 1/5 of it. Swelling was at it’s peak and one of my eyes looked bruised (yellow bruising not purple). Other than that, I didn’t really have other bruising on my face. I did have bruising on my neck I think due to acculift.


Day 4 (Monday) - I was really excited for today because I had my V-line band taken out! The discomfort released as soon as it was taken out. I still of course felt tension in my face, but I felt sooo much more comfortable afterwards. I still had to wear the band when I slept, but that was fine.


View gave me a free hair wash (for zygoma patients) and a laser deswelling treatment. They showed me how to put back on the V-line band, and thank god they did because my dumbass would not have been able to figure that out.


I walked to View and then got dinner from some girls I met. I felt like a peasant eating this soft rice in a water-like substance while they enjoyed KBBQ


I think I lost a little bit of weight prior, but my appetite fully returned on this day. After today, I was happily eating and any weight I had lost prior returned. Oops.


Day 5 (Tuesday) - I still had a bandaid wrapped around my chin, so I wore a face mask out in public.


Today started my journey of walking a lot and touring around Korea. I started by moving from Gangnam to Myeongdong. I made 2 separate 40-minute trips because I had a ton of luggage. I then walked from my new hotel to Myeongdong (20 minutes one-way) to meet up with some girls, and then I walked from Myeongdong to my new hotel. I met up with my cousin at the new hotel, and we walked to Myeongdong again. We then walked back as well. I walked 20,000 steps (8.7 miles) that day, so my point is that clearly I was feeling well and back to normal.


Day 7 (Thursday) - 1 week after surgery! I went back to View, and they removed my zygoma stitches. It didn’t hurt at all. They also removed the wrap around my face. I looked really weird, but if someone didn’t know me, I don’t think they would have known that I was swelling. The worst part was I had a hard lump under my chin from Acculift that made it look like a huge double chin. When they removed the wrap, there was excess glue stick to my face, so it was nice the View’s skin center cleaned my face afterwards. I had a deswelling treatment on this day too.


The doctors also came in to touch my face to make sure that I was healing properly and doing okay with no pain.


Even though I was feeling well, I talked as if I had cotton balls in my mouth. I was able to open my mouth wide enough to brush my teeth and eat solid foods on this day too.


Day 8 to Day 13 - I continued to walk around Seoul a lot every day and went to tourist destinations like the palace, Han River, and animal cafes too. Each day I would feel better than the previous day. This means I would notice less swelling, I could talk more clearly, and I opened my mouth wider.


I think the best method of deswelling is walking around a lot.


Day 14 - I talked pretty normally, and noticed considerably less swelling. I met with the doctors again today, and they said I was healing normally, but I still had swelling. At this point, I looked pretty much the same as I did pre-op with minimal changes. I still had a hard bump under by chin, but it was getting smaller.


I went to the clinic and got my mouth stitches taken out. It hurt, but it only lasted 2.5 minutes. I think I can tolerate pain pretty well, so it wasn’t horrible. Then, I got my CT and X-ray scans. Dr. Lee Dong Chan reviewed them with me, and I was pleasantly surprised at the changes. My zygoma has a huge change, and I will post them below. As for my face results, I will post a follow-up when I’m at least a month post-op. Afterwards, I went up to the skin clinic, and they gave me a mini facial. They used this warm bar on my face, and it felt nice.


Please let me know if you have any questions! ^^ Again, I’ll try to post pictures at a later date when I have less swelling.


Travel Tip: Download Naver Maps and Kakao Maps before going to Korea and map out your consultation. I hated using Kakao Maps for navigating since the bus stops were in Korean and the walking part was confusing. Highly recommend Naver Maps. Make sure you save your addresses on your notes. If you plan to take a taxi, make sure you have the address written in Korean. Also, some taxi tried to rip be off at the airport by telling me the price of going somewhere before getting in so that they don’t use meter. I knew that was a rip off because Naver Maps tells you how much you should expect to pay.

Picture: Left is after and right is before.

 

Np! I was really nervous about this too. I should also mention that I’m an East Asian female. I don’t know the political climate in Korea, but I know some people of certain ethnicities have faced microaggressions at the airport in the USA. Not sure if some people may experience it in Korean airport.

I’m not sure about bringing 15K in won actually.. but Myeongdong has really great exchange rates (near Chinese Embassy). Some currency exchange stores are opened 24/7 and even weekends. Their rates are comparable to the spot rate.

 

Where did you get your veneers and how much was it?

 

Your bags don’t go through the scanner or anything at customs, so you’re right that no one will probably notice. However, I recommend declaring because they can confiscate it otherwise. It literally only takes 5 minutes to declare it. (maybe more if there’s a line).

I brought $16,000USD with me in $100 bills so I had 2 envelops filled with cash in my fanny pack. On your flight to Korea, you will receive a customs form. Check “Yes” to the question if you have over $10,000 in cash. This is literally all I did. I had no other paper work aside from the customs form given to me on the plane (or can be obtained near customs if you fall asleep).

When I arrived at the customs (Gimpo airport), I gave them the slip. The officer told me to go to the left where it had more security people. I approached the more specified customs person, and she just asked me the reason and asked me to show her the cash. She didnt count it or anything. Literally just a 5 second peek, and she laughed whole heartedly when I told her I was going for cosmetic surgery. She marked some paper. I then returned to the first customs officer and gave them the paper. Super easy and they’re nice about it. I can’t imagine having trouble unless you’re bringing an obscene amount of cash.

 

Not a hotel, but you can consider Airbnb’s. I’m staying in the Sinsa-dong Gangnam area in an Airbnb where I share a room with 2 other girls. The Airbnb was around $25/night per person, and it’s really clean. There are also other tourists in the Airbnb’s and some of them are actually getting plastic surgery.

 

Hello!

I consulted online with both clinics but eventually decided on View because of the results I’ve seen from other girls on the View Kakao chat. I think I’m very biased towards View based on that chat, so this probably wasn’t helpful. I’m a 21 year old female getting genio, acculift, and zygoma. PM some in a week for more info!

Also, if you care budget conscious, you might want to reconsider docfinderkorea. You’ll be paying a premium for their services (airport shuttle, translation, getting perscriptions for you). I personally don’t think it’s worth it because Korea is super international and easy to get around. I’m also direction-blind and know 2 Korean phrases (hello and thank you).

 

This seems very inappropriate. You could probably threaten to contact tax departments because I think some clinics evade tax (which is illegal) by asking for cash payments instead.

But obviously I'm not an expert in Korean tax law. Hope someone else can provide more information. Do you mind sharing what clinic this was?

 

Hi, I'm going to Seoul from May 1 - May 15. I will be going for genioplasty, facial lipo x buccal fat removal, and possibly rhinoplasty. I am Chinese American and unfortunately cannot speak Korean. Keen to meet up with you! (: Add me on Kakao: yongyongx

 

Hi,

I'm from the US going to Korea this early May. I'm going primarily for facial contouring (FC) and have not considered rhinoplasty until recently.

View and Gyalumhan are my top choices, but that is mostly because they offer FC options along with rhinoplasty (plus their results are pretty good). I'll let you know how it goes if I proceed next month!

Good luck.

 

Hi! Originally, I wanted 3 FC (zygoma, genioplasty, jaw shaving), but after feeling my face, I'm leaning towards facial lipo/acculift and buccal fat removal (cheek fat removal esp for my lower cheek) instead of jaw shaving (but I will still proceed with genioplasty). From my own research, most clinics (obvs not dental ones) offer non-surgical v-line if they have facial contouring available.

I'm going in for face to face consultations on May 3rd. I'll have more information then but here are the clinics I'm considering (kinda in order):

Note: Prices in krw and a lot of these clinics I've consulted with online have a reputation of "foreign factories," so the prices are probably jacked up high compared to "local rates." I didn't ask about botox options, but I think these places are so big they most likely have botox.

1. Gyalumhan Clinic - you don't hear about this clinic on purseforum much, but they do have English speaking consultants. I love how they promote their non-surgical v-line methods as well. When I consulted with them, they didn't mention jaw shaving, and instead recommended facial lipo (4 mil). Buccal fat removal is 1.5mil.

2. View - I believe I was quoted 3mil per area for Acculift (I think this is what they call facial lipo) and 2.5mil for buccal fat removal.

3. VIP - I forgot how much the procedure was, but they offer facial lipo as well.

4. JW - 5.6mil for Accusculpt and thread lifting.

There's also a clinic running promotions on Misooda called Fresh. I don't know much about them. I hope this helped a little. I don't have experience (yet), but can hopefully provide more info next month.

 

Do you know if they have a website? I hear about them but don't see any B/A photos.

 

I think you should wait. It seems like you haven't researched too much yet (totally okay), and it would be in your best interest to do more research. Not only about the price and recovery process, but make sure that you are able to handle the emotional toll. If you do not have enough saved up, then price of each procedure / clinic will be an important deciding factor. This will have negative effects because you only have one face; you don't want spending an extra couple thousand to determine which clinic you go.

Overall, you should wait. I heard March - early May and mid-September - November are slow seasons.

Good luck!! xx

 

I think if price is your main concern, then avoid Docfinder. Docfinder is for that seamless experience - hotel, transportation, clinic. They try to do the "dirty work" for you, and with that, obviously, comes with a price.

 

Hi! I’m not an expert, but I think mandible square jaw surgery would be a good option to make your face less square and more feminine. I can’t see the front, but from the side your chin doesn’t look too short. Your chin looks really pretty imo. Genioplasty is an option to make your chin more defined, but from the sidebar profile it doesn’t look like you need it.

 

Hello, Happy New Year!

I'm looking to get facial contouring in Korea in mid/late 2019. I know there was a thread about non-surgical procedures, but it looks like that was limited to Korea.

If anyone has gotten veneers or lasik in any Asian country (including Korea), I'd like to know about your experience and possibly price. I'm considering getting veneers and Lasik in Asia, specifically China, because it may be cheaper than the U.S.

I had microblading in China, and I LOVED the results. it looks so much better than many of the results from U.S., and it $100-$200 cheaper than the average US microblading price. So I'm just asking for suggesting on non surgical procedures like veneers and lasik.

I'm also wondering if any of you got skincare treatments in Korea. I'm in my early 20s, and I've been told that my skin is nice. Overall my skin is good, but I was wondering if there were any treatments to get rid of sunspots.

 

I was responding to the OP about the prices lol.

I think someone responded already on a different post, but it's based on a case to case basis. They take a CT scan during the f2f consultation and determine what they can cut off without damaging your nerves.

Personally, when I was initially looking at the before and after photos of The Face Dental, I thought that some of them were too natural (other people mentioned that it was too natural too, which was off putting at first). But there have been others who mentioned that they had great results, and what I really love about TFD is that they don't photoshop or filter their photos. I think clinics that filter and photoshop (basically every clinic) their before and afters give the illusion that the results are dramatic when really it may not be.

 

Thank you, that is good to know! This is going to sound so dumb, but I feel so bad negotiating, especially when they've been so nice and quote me something reasonable. But I will definitely try to negotiate because I'm poor lol. What did you say when negotiating, and did you negotiate during the online consultation or in person?

 

I’m sorry that you’re expecting this complication. Do you mind sharing which clinic you got this done at?

I can’t offer any advice, unfortunately. As someone else mentioned, the best option would probably be to consult with a doctor or even the clinic that’s performed your surgery.

 

In my opinion, they are fair prices in terms of what other big clinics quote to foreigners. Cinderella quoted me 17,000,000 - 18,000,000 mil for v-line + zygoma. View quoted me 6,000,000 for each FC procedure (zygoma, mandible reduction, and genioplasty) ~ 18,000,000. Obviously there may be cheaper clinics, but I do believe TFD is very fair and you are not paying over top. They also offer 10% discount if you pay with cash (as do other clinics).

 

Following because I want to know the same ^ I'm no expert, so I think it depends on the procedures. I've also consulted with each clinic that I'm interested in. I think it also depends on whether you booked the surgery appointment ahead of time (meaning you've probably paid the deposit ahead of time and have chosen the clinic for sure) or if you are doing multiple in-person consultations with different clinics while in Korea.

I'm most likely doing angular jaw, zygoma, and genioplasty, and this post helped a lot: https://beautyhacker.com/forums/topic/1002175-raw-unedited-journal-notes-on-day-to-day-ps-experience-da-for-nose-revision-eye-and-fc/

As of now, I'm planning on staying for 18 days. I wanted to stay only 2 weeks, but I think that's cutting it close for FC.

 

Happy to hear your positive experience! I am considering TFD as well.

After how many days post-op were you able to go outside and shop around?

 

You look amazing pre-op and even more beautiful post-op!

I was just wondering how long did you stay in South Korea for? Also on the second day post-op, were you able to go outside without having people give you looks?

 

You are so brave for going alone. I can feel your pain and nervousness from the day of the surgery to the first couple of days post-op.

I hope you have amazing results!