See the difference in the before and after photos above? That's 12-year-old Lee Min Kyong after plastic surgery of her eyelids to make her look more "western."
Scoff all you will, but plastic surgery to make Asians look more western is big business in Asia, and growing rapidly:
The definition of pretty, explains their plastic surgeon, is not the standard Asian face, but closer to a Caucasian face. Dr Kim Byung-gun is the head of Seoul, South Korea's biggest plastic surgery clinic, BK DongYang. The clinic is a dozen stories tall, with all of its operating rooms full on the day of Min kyong's surgery.
Dr Kim says his clinic, one of the most successful in a city dubbed the "plastic surgery capital of Asia," performs 100 surgeries a day, ranging from eyelid surgery to nose reshaping to facial contouring.
"They always tell me they don't like their faces," says Dr Kim, explaining what his patients request prior to surgery. "They want to have some westernized, nice faces. They want to have big eyes like westernized people, high profile, nicer noses.
"The Chinese and Korean patients tell me that they want to have faces like Americans. The idea of beauty is more westernized recently. That means the Asian people want to have a little less Asian, more westernized appearance. They don't like big cheekbones or small eyes. They want to have big, bright eyes with slender, nice facial bones."