Plastic surgery in Chinese probed

‘Surgeons flew in to perform illegal face re-contouring’

By Lee Kyung-min

Two plastic surgeons based in the affluent Gangnam area of Seoul are being investigated for performing illegal surgery on 40 people in China.

They allegedly repeatedly flew to China from May and performed operations over a two month period at a beauty parlor owned by a Chinese woman, identified as Wang, 26.

According to Korean police, Wang is also being questioned by Chinese authorities. She allegedly also acted as a broker linking Chinese customers with Korean clinics.

The National Police Agency (NPA) said it received a request from Chinese police to cooperate in the investigation.

The two surgeons reportedly flew to Wang’s parlor four times on weekends since early May and performed facial bone re-contouring surgery on 10 people during each visit.

Wang and the surgeons divided the money equally, taking cash-only payments from the patients in an attempt to evade the authorities’ monitoring, police said.

The Chinese businesswoman invited the surgeons to her parlor’s opening on May 8 and attracted customers with advertisements, saying “Noted plastic surgeons from South Korea are here to perform sophisticated surgery.”

She ran the advertisements on online social messaging sites such as WeChat and then made surgery appointments for customers, police said.

She only accepted clients who paid part of the surgery fee through Alipay, a Chinese online payment system.

Wang’s latest scheme came shortly after she came under investigation for illegally selling diet pills to Chinese people after buying them in Korea with the help of doctors here who wrote the prescriptions.

Police believe the surgeons who carried out the surgery in May are the same people involved in writing the prescriptions.

Doctors performing surgery in foreign countries at unauthorized facilities such as beauty parlors is illegal, subject to criminal prosecution as well as an administrative punishment including license suspension, according to the NPA.

Charges could be increased if they did so with prior knowledge about the illegality of such acts, police said.

Early last month, the Western District Prosecutors’ Office detained nine Chinese brokers and booked 99 others without physical detention for charging commission of up to 90 percent of surgery fees.

They made a combined 2.4 billion won ($2.1 million).

Legitimate doctors say this destroys the trust in Korea’s medical industry because patients end up being overcharged, the prosecution said.