Remedying the Body Plastic Surgery and the Politics of Embodiment in Korea

<p>Plastic surgery has exploded in popularity around the world in the recent decades, with South Korea emerging as a leader of the global beauty economy. This book presents a cultural discourse of plastic surgery in Korea through the feminist politics of care, bringing together intersecting narratives of marginalization to reimagine coalitional ways of surviving a world governed by oppressive bodily norms. Pulling together a diverse array of archival and cultural materials from the 1950s to the 2020s, including newspapers, television, film, visual art, digital media, and feminist street protests, So-Rim Lee takes Korea as a paradigmatic example to show how the cultural construction of plastic surgery is entwined with the norms governing desire, upward mobility, and social belonging. </p><p>  Loosely translated from the Korean term <i>koch''ida</i> ("to fix or mend"), Lee uses the term "remedy" to name a broad spectrum of medical interventions that are performed with the aim of changing the bodily appearance to arrive at a bodily norm. A remedy promises to alleviate, heal, or cure a broad range of conditions including disease, disability, and psychological pain. It is, however, much more than medical treatment alone. This book contends that remedy is also a critical cultural ethos, a social performance of subjectivity, and a material practice of embodiment where state biopolitics and individual desire for belonging are inextricably entangled.</p>