 1. A small face. 2. A V-shaped jawline. 3. Pale, fair skin. 4. Big eyes. 5. Double eyelids. 6. Aegyosal. Or protruding lower eye bags. 7. A medium-sized nose bridge. Not too small, but definitely not too strong or big. 8. Small but plump lips. And of course, 9. A slim, slim, slim figure. The end result would give you something like this. Or this. Or this. Or this. We see it in K-pop, we see it in K-drama on advertisements in billboards in high school and college. The Korean beauty standard is the most infamous beauty standard in the world. And not only is it the most strict, it is the most specific beauty standard in the world. If you walk through any Korean grocery store, you'll see the shelves stocked with facial masks, lotions, moisturizers, BB cream, care products. All for the purpose of making yourself look beautiful. Creamy concealer. Why don't you try it? Perfect show. Especially dark circles. Makeup is my town. There are thousands of channels dedicated to K-beauty and K-makeup. Even the act of simply just washing your face is a 10-step process. The importance of K-beauty is such that the K-beauty industry is estimated to be worth more than 13 billion dollars with an annual 11.3% growth rate. By 2026, it's estimated to be worth 21 billion dollars, which would make it four times bigger than the entire K-pop industry. Game over. Wow. I mean, why stand BTS or BLACKPINK when you can stand Innisfree? In fact, Amore Pacific K-beauty conglomerate earns 5 trillion won a year or 4.4 billion dollars. Nine times of what Big Hit earned in 2019. While it's nice to want to look good, this creates the idea that there is only one type of beautiful and everything else is ugly. Obviously, most of the girls in the world aren't born with the exact features that match up perfectly with a Korean beauty standard. So in order to hit those standards, many girls turn to plastic surgery. Now it's no secret plastic surgery is extremely prevalent in South Korea. In fact, per capita, Korea has the most plastic surgery procedures in the world with 14% of women having some sort of plastic surgery done. U.S. only has 7%. And for women in their 20s, that number jumps to 30%. The most unnerving and extreme example is the story of Hang Mi-ok-gu. She was a Korean model. She had a beautiful, young face. Big eyes and great features. At the age of 28, she had her first procedure. From then on, she became addicted to the chase. The thought of becoming more beautiful. For skin that was more smooth and useful, it drove her to have more and more procedures. It eventually came to the point where the doctor refused to do any more surgery because of how enlarged her face had become. So because she couldn't get what she was looking for from the doctors, she took measures into her own hands. She obtained a bottle of silicone from the black market and started injecting it into her face. Eventually, she ran out and resorted to using cooking oil. The attempt on her face had left her scarred and deformed. In an attempt to reverse the damage, she had 10 procedures done. The doctors removed 260 grams, about 0.6 pounds of silicone, oil, and other foreign substances from her face and neck. The doctors did the best they could, but she was still left disfigured. Just a disclaimer, this is not an attack on plastic surgery. I personally have no problem with it. I think it's perfectly fine in moderation. Of course, there's nothing wrong with wanting to look beautiful. Everybody, and I mean everybody, wants to look beautiful. Who are we to judge and say shame on this person for wanting to look prettier? Shame on this person for not being born with the perfect nose. Why should a person be judged for doing something that makes them feel happy? And beautiful. But sometimes when a person fails to achieve that standard of beauty, this creates feelings of being unworthy or insecure about their looks. And sometimes, they take it to the extreme. Another extreme example is one by Hirae Momo of the K-pop girl group twice. She revealed in a V-live that she was instructed as a trainee to lose 15 pounds or 7 kilograms in one week. So for one whole week, she ate nothing but an ice-keep. But even that made her scared, thinking she was going to gain weight. During the blood, sweat and tears era, Jimin of BTS said he had to go through a diet that made him feel extremely ill. He also had to lose 15 pounds. This caused him to pass out often during practices. Sistar's Taesom once ate nothing but cucumbers for three straight weeks in order to lose 22 pounds or 10 kilograms. Now this is just three of many, many examples of idols, celebrities or even just normal people trying to keep up with the beauty standards enforced on them. Because this so-called beauty is so sought after and desired, many people will go to extreme unhealthy methods to achieve their goal. I wanted to find someone that had first-hand experience of this in the Korean entertainment industry. So I was able to speak with soloist Grazy Grace, an artist in the Korean music industry. So how strict are the beauty standards in Korea? And how much more so if you're a K-pop idol? I think that a lot of people think that the Korean or Asian beauty standards are pretty strict because it's not something that the Western country is used to. I do feel like there is less inclusion of different sizes and colors compared to the Western countries. So it definitely may seem strict. But I guess to Koreans or to Asians, it doesn't seem as strict because that's kind of like what we grew up with. For example, in K-pop, if you go for girls, sometimes if you go over 50 kilograms, people might think that you're a little bit overweight. But I do feel like the beauty standards are changing a lot. Like we're focusing more on talent rather than just appearances. In Korean, we call it like, which is like uniqueness, like your own personal talent that you have about yourself. So that is definitely being more focused nowadays. And I hope it changes like that because we shouldn't be focusing too much on appearances. We should be balanced. So I guess what are some of the first-hand experiences that you've seen of people trying to fit into these standards? Well, I've seen girls take laxatives because we were having like a weight day, which they check your weight like every, I think it was once a week. Sometimes they did it every day if they didn't really like us or something. But during weight check-in days, girls literally taking laxatives in order to flush out their system so it doesn't seem like they've gained weight. And that's kind of, it's not good for you if you're forcefully taking drugs. If it's not something that you're supposed to be taking because of health reasons. There would also be a time when girls would eat yogurt instead of meals and then there was like company people who would see us buy yogurt and they were yelling. Well, not yelling, but they were kind of criticizing the girl who got the yogurt containing too much sugar, too much less than that. Why are you eating that? And instead of like educating us and instead of educating us about food and what we should be eating instead of this or like literally providing us with something that we could actually afford, they just kind of, they just criticize you. They just say something about you and that's like the mental stress that just makes it worse. So my last question, I guess, is how do you think that Koreans, especially women, can learn to feel more confident about themselves and their own beauty? I think to feel confident anywhere around the world we need to have more inclusion. We need to include more sizes. We need to include more beauty standards such as if you don't have double eyelids. It doesn't mean you're ugly. It means you're unique. That's beautiful. You know having whatever it might be having a square jaw instead of V-line which V-line is very popular in Asia. I have a freaking square jaw and they didn't think this was okay. I almost even thought about going to surgery like having my bone shade because it wasn't inclusive in the beauty standards. If we include so many more things to this pot of beauty standards I think it would make a lot of people more confident and I think everyone is fine the way they are but it is also okay to not be fine I want to tweak some little things because we all have our own beauty standards and we all have our own happiness and what we want to do to our own bodies and our own confidence so we should be just okay and be more open minded with everything whether you want this or you don't you should also be very open minded. So what do you guys think? Is the Korean beauty standard too strict? Especially on idols? Let me know down below in the comments. Hey guys special thanks to Grazy Grace You should check out her channel and her new single called Planet Hey guys if you liked this video remember to hit subscribe that will really help out this channel and otherwise until next time