Plastic surgery is killing journalism!

I was certain I was in the Twilight Zone today. A creature of habit, I was heading down to the first floor of KBS for my morning coffee around 9:30 when I stepped off the elevator and heard a clamor of aggregate female voices so loud I nearly had to cover my ears. As I rounded the corner on my way to the coffee shop I glanced down a long hallway and saw one of the most interesting sights of my life. Lined up along the entire length of the hallway, with their faces about a foot from the wall, stood shoulder-to-shoulder beautiful Korean women reading aloud from pieces of white paper. The only factor that seemed to distinguish these animated figures with milky white skin was their slim-fitting skirt suits in varied colors. Why are these women talking, with great expression , to the wall?! Furthermore, how can every single one of them be a near mirror-image of her neighbor? Weird.

I grabbed my coffee and was headed back up to the office when I ran into Sophia, rushing in late to work. I said, "What is this all about?" and gestured to the line-up whose odd behavior conjured my theory that these creatures must be aliens from some kind of perfect Asian planet. Sophia explained that KBS was holding auditions today for a new female newscaster. I said, "These women are journalists?!" Sophia almost looked confused and said, "No, newscasters." Oh, right. Now I was the one looking confused.

Pardon my elitist view of pubic broadcasters, but dammit, KBS let me down today! I know it's not just KBS. Many news agencies in Korea and around the world give news anchor jobs to lovely and handsome talking heads who have absolutely no background in journalism. They're actors and actresses playing journalist. Even CNN and other television news outlets in the U.S. have been accused of such procedure. I suppose I just hoped KBS was different.

As if my morning wakeup call weren't enough, my afternoon trip to the post office elicited perhaps an even more surreal experience. As I passed by the babbling row of lipsticked wannabes and approached the lobby of KBS, I realized I hadn't seen anything yet. The entire lobby was filled with chairs accommodating row upon row of perfectly coiffed, perfectly poised, Asian beauties waiting for their chance to make it big. 70% of them had strangely western-looking noses and eyes (I'll get to that later). 95% of them had the same haircut. 100% of them want to be the newest face of KBS.

I was so enthralled by this odd spectacle that I commented to my English service colleague, Mr. Chae, that all these women look the same! And this isn't just an uncouth observation coming from an ignorant American. These women really did look freakishly similar to one another. That's when Mr. Chae told me many of them have had plastic surgery to make their noses more narrow and their eyes wider. Mr. Chae says South Korea is a world leader in plastic surgery. This is something Sophia also mentioned just days ago, saying Koreans are obsessed with their appearance and want to look as western as possible. Nerd that I am, I had to look into it. According to TIME Magazine, "eye jobs", rather simple surgeries that create an artificial double eyelid, can be done for $800 in South Korea. Another news source calls plastic surgery a "national obsession" in the country.

But whether it's narrow noses, wider eyes, or completely different features, it seems Asians can't figure out who they want to look like. Further investigation led me to several sources that say Chinese and Japanese television fans are flocking to South Korea for plastic surgery to make them look more Korean. They're so infatuated with Korean soap opera stars, they want to look just like them. So, if the Koreans start looking western and the Japanese and Chinese are looking Korean . . . what's next? I guess the Korean chick with eyes wider than mine will let us know in an upcoming KBS newscast.