Women Who Undergo Plastic Surgery In Korea Denied Access To Their Home Countries

Women who travel to South Korea for the countrys infamousand rampantplastic surgery are facing a new hurdle post-op: They are being denied entry to their home countries because their new faces don't resemble their passport photos.

According to Kotaku, which sourced articles from Korean websitesOnboaandMunhwa, some Chinese and Japanese women who visit South Korea to go under the knife are refused re-entry by border agents unable to recognize them from their passport photos.

The sites reported that some South Korean hospitals are issuing plastic-surgery certificates for overseas patients to circumvent issues when traveling back home. The hospitals claim having the certificate will help customs officials verify faces with photos and bypass calling hospitals to confirm the procedures. The certificates include the patients passport number, information about the hospital and the length of their stay, along with the hospitals official seal.

The report said these certificates have been in existence for three years but are more common now that plastic-surgery operations have become more prevalent. Onbao reported that visits to South Korea on medical tourism visas have increased tenfold, with 25,176 tourists in 2013 up from just 2,545 in 2011.

According to International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery data, South Korea has the seventh-highest total number of procedures, with 258,250 performed in 2011. The United States, though, is the leader in number of plastic surgeries with more than 1 million performed in 2011.

Jenny Burke, public affairs officer at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said shed never heard of plastic-surgery certificates, nor has the issue ever been brought to her attention.

I dont think weve ever had that question, Burke said. The CBP did not offer any additional information about the matter, and Burke declined to provide information about training CBP officers receive or the criteria they evaluate when inspecting passport photos.

Dr. Foad Nahai,a former ISAPS president and professor of plastic surgery at Emory University in Atlanta, also said he has never heard of plastic-surgery certificates to prove an individual has had cosmetic surgery, likely because of the nature of the work conducted in the U.S.

In the U.S., we do not routinely undertake procedures that drastically change someone's appearance, Dr. Nahai said. [It's] a different case in Asia; [they do] much more bone work than we do for purely cosmetic reasons.

A plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, Calif., Brent Moelleken, said he did have one patient who had had a 360 Facelift and reported a similar predicament when traveling to Mexico.

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Women Who Undergo Plastic Surgery In Korea Denied Access To Their Home Countries