The truth behind the glossy surface of South Korea’s aesthetic tourism industry

Just a short walk from Sinsa station in Gangnam, along a stretch of eight-lane traffic flanked by office towers, is an area known to Seoul locals as “Plastic Surgery Alley.” It’s home to clinics with names like “Reborn” and “Better Me” and “Cinderella,” all of them devoted to aesthetics, with identical-looking lobbies gleaming with white marble and smooth jazz playing in the background.

On a recent September afternoon, Lorena Andon, 47, was seated on the curved white couch of one such clinic. She’d just arrived for her appointment dressed in a Miu Miu T-shirt and diamond jewellery. It was her fourth day in Seoul.

How many of these clinics had she visited since arriving in South Korea? She’d lost count. For Andon, who flew in from New York, beauty was the whole point of the week-long trip. This was her Korea glow-up. Not a vacation but a glow-cation. Her goal was to fly home looking tighter, fresher, glowier. Reborn.

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It was her cousin’s idea. “Like a next-level girl’s trip,” she said. “Obviously you see it on Instagram. Everyone’s doing it, so why not?”

What she and her cousin – and so many others on Instagram – were looking to buy in South Korea was time.

“Eventually, I’m going to have a facelift,” she said. But she’s hoping to wait until at least her mid-50s. “I’m trying to time it.”

Over the past few years, South Korea has seen millions of foreigners travelling to Seoul not to sightsee, but for cosmetic treatments, from teeth-whitening and Botox to facial contouring and rhinoplasty. In a world where a smoother forehead, a slimmer jawline, a plumper lip, seems infinitely possible, Seoul has emerged as the global beauty capital.

Since 2023, the number of foreign tourists travelling to Korea for medical treatments has nearly doubled year-over-year. Over two million visited in 2025 alone, with almost three-quarters of those visitors reporting “dermatology” or “plastic surgery” as the main purpose of their trip. The majority of those visitors came from China and Japan, but also included more than 24,000 Canadians.

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Here is a list of all the treatments Andon had received on her trip that week so far. In her words, “From head to tail”:

A four-hour treatment at a head spa, where a tiny camera with a microscopic lens analyzed her scalp, measuring oil production and the thickness of her hair. (“Really educational.”)

On her face, there were multiple laser treatments to fade hyperpigmentation. (“I’m a sun worshipper.”). Radio frequency skin tightening. Stem-cell skin booster injections. (“With PDRN,” a substance extracted from salmon sperm.) And something called a ponytail lift, meant to give her brows and temple the pulled-back look you get from a high pony.

This afternoon, there were battle scars left all over her face. Dark spots under her eyes from the lasers. The sides of her face were covered in raised dots – dozens of injection sites from the skin boosters. She looked like the comic-book subject of a Lichtenstein.

How much had it all cost?

She let out a long exhale. “A lot.”

More than $5,000? “Oh god, yeah,” she laughed.

More than $10,000? “Probably.” Not including travel.

But she wasn’t finished yet. Here she was at another clinic. Another consultation. “Let’s see what the damage is here.”

For anyone over 30 and female, there’s a good chance their algorithm is already flooded with videos. “Ultimate 10-day Korea glowmaxxing itinerary.” “I spent $5,000 on a 5-day glow-up in Korea.” “Fly to Korea with me to get 7 skin treatments in 1 day.” Countless overhead selfies of women (and, increasingly men) lying on treatment beds, numbing cream on their faces.

In South Korea, where the culture remains deeply rooted in social harmony, physical presentation – showing up polished and put-together – is seen as a sign of respect, to yourself and also to others. Employers there often still expect a headshot along with a résumé on job applications.

Because of this, South Korea’s aesthetics industry has a long and established history. The country has the highest per-capita rate of plastic surgery in the world, with over 500 clinics in Gangnam alone. One well-known plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam, which occupies a 16-storey office tower, has an entire floor devoted to rhinoplasty.

Jennifer Seo, a Korean-American who runs Aneue, a beauty concierge service for foreigners travelling to South Korea, said that such procedures are widely accepted and commonplace. “People walk around with bandaged, swollen faces all the time. And no one skips a beat,” she said. “People go back to work after an upper blepharoplasty. It’s just part of the culture.”

Partly because of this, the treatments are often priced at a fraction of what they might cost in North America.

And then there’s been the rise of hallyu – the enormous wave of interest in all things Korean – K-pop, K-food, and K-beauty. The South Korean government has invested heavily in promoting aesthetic tourism, including easing visa requirements for foreign patients. It’s only natural, said Seo, that people would look to Korea.

Many of Seo’s clients are interested in Korea because the technologies and treatments there oftentimes aren’t available elsewhere. The popular injectable PDRN (salmon DNA) skin booster, which promises hydration and collagen production, has been widely available in Korea since 2014. But it’s not yet legal in the U.S. or Canada.

Other popular treatments, meanwhile, likely never will be – like extracellular matrix, or ECM, a buzzy new injectable favoured by Korean celebrities. It’s made out of donated tissue from human cadavers.

Even when the technologies are available in North America, said Seo, North American technicians often don’t have the same level of experience using them.

Still, there are potential risks.

When AJ Reyerson first moved from the U.S. to Seoul for work in 2022, she decided to visit a skin clinic that a blogger had written glowingly about.

While the blogger had a long consultation with a dermatologist, Reyerson was met only with a sales consultant. That consultant, she said, “immediately tried to talk me into a $3,000 laser package because I was ‘so wrinkly and old.’” She was 36 at the time.

Instead of a private room, she was led to a large room with many treatment beds separated by curtains. “There were beds and beds and beds and beds.”

What Reyerson had asked for was Botox on her back, to relieve shoulder and neck tension. But when the clinic employee, who spoke only Korean, walked in, she gestured for Reyerson to lay on her back.

Then the woman began to apply numbing cream to her face.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, what?’”

She had been confused, it turned out, with another patient. She left immediately.

“K-beauty gets very simplified on social media,” said Reyerson, “and there are a lot of people that claim they’re experts. When they’re not.” Influencers are regularly provided with free treatments, she said, or paid outright to speak favourably about their experiences.

Many tourists fear being upsold or overcharged. Or experiencing a nightmare scenario like that of the American influencer who shared online last year that she had lost vision in one eye after a visit to a skin clinic in Korea.

Mariusz Sapijaszko, a dermatologist and clinical professor at the University of Alberta, encouraged Canadians to seek treatments close to home whenever possible.

“With any treatments,” he said, “local treatments offer the best combination of safety, and the ability to catch and manage any untoward effects.”

He added that the practice of stacking treatments – having many treatments performed at the same time – can sometimes lead to other potential challenges. It can overwhelm the skin, he said, or potentially result in hyperpigmentation.

After her experience, Reyerson has since launched her own concierge business, Docent, which helps foreigners to vet clinics ahead of their visits.

And she recommends all foreigners ask the following questions: Am I able to consult directly with the doctor or dermatologist? Is there a translator who can speak my language? Do they have experience treating patients with my skin type?

And there’s another consideration that doesn’t occur to many tourists. She’s lost track, she said, of how many times a Korean doctor has evaluated her own Caucasian features against Korean beauty standards – how many times she’s been told she has a “moon” (round) face, and a “dragon” (upturned) nose.

It’s important, she said, to ask: “Do they understand that I’m not Korean? And that I don’t want to have a Korean-looking face?”

Back at the Gangnam clinic, Sul Hee Lee, a dermatologist, was walking Andon through the basics of skin tightening. She was describing to her a device called ONDA – “a microwave technology” which “selectively targets adipose tissue” – in other words, fat.

Dr. Lee gestured back and forth between her monitor and Andon’s body, drawing lines in the air across her arms and legs. A separate clinic employee broke it down for her: Tightening her inner thighs would cost about 840,000 won, or about $640 USD. The entire thigh would cost double that.

“So $1,300 is the whole thigh?”

The translator and the woman conferred. They nodded.

“Inner thigh, outer thigh, all the way around?”

More nodding.

Andon pulled out her Amex card.

“Might as well. We’re here,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been saying all week.” She was shaking her head and laughing, but she looked tired.

With beauty standards increasingly shaped by social media feeds, by AI bots and TikTok filters – and with so many of these clinics here in Gangnam making the same scientifically impossible promises like “fat-freezing” and “glass skin” – it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that a face is just a face, and not a thing to fix. To lose touch, eventually, with the reality of real, unedited skin, and whole human bodies.

In the waiting room, Andon’s cousin, Chantel Uchida, finally joined her at the clinic. Uchida, 45, had been running late from another appointment.

She had news.

“I have normal salivary glands,” she announced.

Andon blinked a few times before shaking her head. A big revelation this week was a doctor telling her she had both a “chicken neck” and – she put her hand up, as if to say, wait for this – “HUGE salivary glands.” She pointed to the area on her neck, below her ears. “They’re messing up my jaw line.”

Both women’s egos had taken a beating this week. The doctors here weren’t shy to point out each and every little thing that needed tweaking.

After the ONDA treatment, after Andon had changed back into her own clothes, she and her cousin sat in the lobby, debriefing their trip.

They would fly home the next day – Andon to New York, and Uchida back to California.

Andon had an estimate, now, for how much she’d spent on the trip. All told, including her flights and hotel and meals, it was easily over $20,000 USD.

She was torn. If the point was to spend time with her cousin, then she considered the trip a success. “It’s like a sleepover every night at the hotel,” she said. They’d had so much fun together.

But, she acknowledged, it was far. A long trip to make. And a lot of money to spend.

Plus, each appointment and treatment had taken a lot longer than she’d anticipated. “I’d say Instagram is a little bit of a lie,” she said. “You get this impression that you can do 12 things in a day, but it’s not realistic. There’s only so many things you can do to your face.”

And the results wouldn’t be evident for a few more weeks. She couldn’t tell, from behind all of the swelling and bruising, on whether she had, in fact, bought herself some more time.

Did she at least have a chance to enjoy Seoul while she was here? To see the palaces or markets, or take in the sights?

“No,” said Andon, shaking her head. “We didn’t have time.”