The Body in Packaging Culture: Researching Cosmetic Surgery within Korea’s Neo-Confucian Culture

Abstract

Contemporary developments within the current global self-care regime have increased the potential of many individuals to control their own bodies, and to have their bodies surveilled by others (Shilling, 2003). The body is understood as a project that needs to be “worked at and accomplished as part of an individual’s self-identity” (Shilling, 2003:4) in this time of ‘high modernity’ (Giddens, 1991). The project of cosmetic surgery is one example of how modern individuals attribute significance both to their bodies and the way their bodies look. In a South Korean context, the cosmetic surgery scene is especially interesting to examine in the light of the uniquely Korean practice of giving cosmetic surgery as a gift, especially to daughters. Ironically, the body has to remain unaltered from how it has been received at birth according to the Neo-Confucian tradition, which continues to form the ideological base of contemporary Korean society. Moreover, this tradition teaches that inward goodness does not depend upon one’s outer appearance, something that is quite opposite to “popular physiognomic assumptions that the body, especially the face, is a reflection of the self” (Featherstone, 2010:195). This thesis specifically attempts to understand the practice of cosmetic surgery within Korean society, arguing that this practice is ironically supported by Korea’s remaining Neo-Confucian traditions as well as by contemporary global body-care regimes, which somehow interlock with Neo-Confucian ideas concerning body management.