[INTERVIEW] Director Jo Jeong-mok

There are always people who are busy. People who make you think, “How do they manage to do all this?” The thought naturally comes to mind. When you see people who do not just work a lot, but do that work almost perfectly, you can’t help but be amazed. For me, Director Jo Jeong-mok is one of those people. Surgery, hospital management, academic society activities, content filming, overseas business trips, and more... He easily handles schedules that seem like they would require ten bodies.

What makes him even more impressive is that he never loses his smile despite such a busy schedule. Every time we greeted each other while passing by at the hospital, he always welcomed me with a smile. Seeing that, I thought he would probably greet patients with that same kind smile as well. And sure enough, no matter which reviews I read, they were full of praise.

It is said that “living diligently and correctly requires tremendous energy.” Using that saying as a comparison, I thought Director Jo Jeong-mok must also need a great deal of energy. If so, where does the core that produces that energy come from? What kind of mindset allows someone to work like that? And beyond that, with what kind of heart does he want to keep doing this work? One evening, I sat down with Director Jo Jeong-mok for a conversation.

Q. Nice to meet you, and thank you for agreeing to this interview despite your busy schedule. What has your daily life been like lately?

As always, I’ve been keeping busy. First of all, consultations and surgeries keep increasing. Thankfully, a lot of new patients are coming through introductions from people who were already being treated here. There are also patients who came after watching <Jomok Jomok TV> related to breast surgery. It has been over six months since Eton Plastic Surgery started seeing patients. I thought everything would be sorted out after about six months, but there are still many things to organize and resolve. We’re also continuing to refine the manual for how Eton should approach customers, as well as how consultations and post-operative care should be handled.

Q. You’re handling surgeries, various meetings and decisions, YouTube filming, academic society events, business trips, and more... It seems like a schedule that would be impossible without ten bodies. I’m curious why you choose to stay so active in so many different areas.

First of all, there’s something wrong with my personality. (laughs) When people gather, there are several types. There are those who just quietly read the room, and there are those who say, “Forget it. I’ll do it.” I think I’m the latter. When I attend meetings, make decisions, or go to academic societies, there are times when I think, “Why is this being done this way?” In those moments, I often throw out ideas like, “How about doing it like this?” In most cases, the person who comes up with a good idea ends up taking on the work. That’s usually me. (laughs)

To go through your question one by one... As the director, I need to run meetings and make decisions accurately and quickly so that each department can collaborate smoothly. When I think about that, I end up staying at the hospital late without taking a break, thinking, “I’ll just finish this and then rest…” Because if I make decisions quickly, the staff won’t have to wait and can work with energy. As a result, I keep putting off my own personal matters.

I do continue filming <Jomok Jomok TV> regularly. The topic filmed today was the 142nd one. In other words, that means I’ve been doing it consistently for 142 weeks. That’s nearly three years without missing a single week. The secret is that as soon as filming ends, I schedule the next month’s filming date right away. Even then, one month passes incredibly fast. Because my schedule is so busy, I always feel that I’m not as prepared as I’d like for each filming session, so I end up promising myself to prepare better next month. (laughs)

As for academic societies... during the seven months since starting treatment at Eton, two papers have been published, and another one is almost finished and is expected to be published around next month. We really run the hospital based on evidence-based medicine. There are actually many hospitals that put up slogans like “We provide care for the patient” or “We will do our best to ensure customer service satisfaction.” But I do wonder how many of them truly operate that way. At Eton Plastic Surgery, we actively participate in academic society activities to show that we practice evidence-based medicine with evidence behind it.

In fact, doing a lot of academic work does not directly help hospital operations. Still, I want to keep in mind that doctors are scientists who study medicine. By sharing the good knowledge and clinical experience I have with fellow doctors, I want to contribute even a little to the development of medicine in our country.

As I talk, it really sounds like I do a lot. (laughs) But these days, I’m also concerned about my health, so I’ve increased my exercise time and reduced some academic activities little by little. I am a doctor, but I’m also the head of a family, so I need to spend weekends with my family. Since academic meetings are usually held on weekends, attending them often inevitably reduces the time I can spend with my family. So my wife and I made a coupon system that lets me attend only a certain number of academic events each month. Last month, I used up all my coupons, so I barely managed to decline a lecture request. (laughs)

Q. Just hearing that, it sounds like a schedule I could never handle. In your second answer alone, I feel like we already got several pages’ worth of response. (laughs) This time, I’d like to ask about something a bit further back. What motivated you to enter medical school?

As a high school student, I was deeply interested in computer engineering. Then I thought that medicine is also a science, and computer engineering is also a science, but medicine is the field where I can directly affect an individual. So I decided to go to medical school. Looking back now, I think it was a good choice. I often approach medicine and hospital work from a different engineering perspective, and that interdisciplinary viewpoint has been very helpful.

I chose the path of becoming a doctor and entered Seoul National University College of Medicine. Until I was doing my clinical rotations, I planned to go into general surgery. I thought it was fun to solve problems with my hands. But in the case of general surgery, I ended up seeing many cancer surgery patients. Although cancer surgery is an important operation that improves a patient’s survival rate, I wondered whether I could do that surgery for my entire life. I’m very curious and want to try a variety of things, but I felt that would be difficult in surgery. Then I rotated through plastic surgery, and plastic surgery was creating something that didn’t exist before, from head to toe. Seeing that, I became interested in reconstructive and aesthetic surgery. Also, plastic surgery is a field with a relatively short history, so there were many areas that still needed to be developed. I felt that it would suit my curious nature and my tendency to explore new things. From that point on, I walked the path toward becoming a board-certified plastic surgeon.

Q. Broadly speaking, plastic surgery can be divided into reconstructive surgery and aesthetic surgery. I’ve heard that university hospitals usually do more reconstructive surgery, while private clinics usually do more aesthetic surgery. I understand that you have experience in both reconstructive and aesthetic surgery. I’m curious why you chose aesthetic surgery in a private clinic rather than at a university hospital, and furthermore, why you specialized in breast surgery.

During my medical school rotations and training at a university hospital, it was very difficult for me to watch the treatment of cancer patients and patients with severe trauma. After surgery, I kept imagining the suffering and pain the patient would go through as if it were my own. Through that process, I realized that I am someone who is greatly affected by a patient’s situation and emotions. On the other hand, aesthetic surgery is an operation to make the current self a little more beautiful, so many patients feel happy after surgery. Seeing patients who received surgery from me feel joyful gives me a great sense of reward as well.

The reason I came to focus mainly on breast surgery was a series of fate-like coincidences. When I became a board-certified plastic surgeon, contouring surgery was very popular. But during my graduate studies, my advisor specialized in breast reconstruction. Even when I was learning surgery at a senior doctor’s clinic after completing my residency, I ended up learning more about procedures that deal with soft tissue, such as breast surgery and lifting surgery, rather than bone procedures. In the process of finding the surgery I was good at, I happened to encounter breast surgery as if by fate. Coincidentally, my master’s thesis was also based on an animal experiment about the effect of using acellular dermal matrix tissue to prevent capsular contracture after artificial breast implant surgery.

That was how I started, but the reason I kept doing it is... compared with other surgeries, I think breast surgery requires a very high level of patient empathy. After surgery, patients have to keep their artificial breast implants for more than 10 years, so the relationship does not end with just one operation. You have to keep seeing them. The recovery and settling-in process is also longer than with other surgeries. So this is a field where you can’t just say, “The surgery is done, and that’s the end.” You have to explain every detail, such as how to wear a bra in the middle of recovery and what lifestyle changes are needed. My tendency to empathize with a patient’s pain might be a difficult trait in other surgeries, but in breast surgery, I think this aspect of my personality helps the patient. There are some plastic surgeons who lack empathy and think, “I just need to do the surgery well, and after that I don’t need to be involved.” But I am someone who is good at empathizing, and because I keep meeting patients over time, more and more of them become happy, which is why I continue doing breast surgery.

Q. So a weakness that might be seen as a downside for a doctor becomes a strength in practice. When you work in a private clinic, most patients probably come not because of an accident or injury, but for improvement in appearance or maintenance. Based on that, I’m curious about your philosophy toward patients.

Looking around, there are fewer people than you might think who go to consult with a plastic surgeon. According to a Korea Research survey report, the percentage of people who have received consultations for plastic surgery is not very high. The fact that someone comes to a plastic surgery consultation means they have been worrying a great deal about their appearance. They must have thought about it a lot before coming, so even though I’ve become used to treating patients, I try not to take their feelings lightly. Saying something like, “This is fine as it is, why would you do anything?” is absolutely not something that should be said. That’s because it is related to the patient’s self-esteem. Most patients want to improve the parts of their appearance they are dissatisfied with, and they hope that by improving them, they will receive more attention and become a better version of themselves. I try to understand those feelings carefully.

Sometimes, there are patients who come with distorted expectations. If someone thinks that all the unhappiness in their life and their current situation are 100% caused by their appearance... honestly, if you operate on patients like that, the chances are high that both sides will end up suffering. That’s because even though you know that plastic surgery alone cannot solve everything, you might still recommend surgery for profit. Because of that, when I consult with patients, I not only talk about the surgery itself but also say things like, “Wouldn’t it be better to try this outside of surgery as well?” so I sometimes end up giving life advice too. I’m trying to become more than just a doctor who performs plastic surgery well; I’m trying to become a doctor who can look at what lies beneath—why this person wants surgery and what they hope to achieve through it.

Q. We’re getting close to the middle of the interview, and after hearing your answers, I feel a sense of loyalty to the hospital. (laughs) You mainly perform breast surgery at Eton, but I understand there are many non-invasive procedures such as thread lifting and petite procedures. I’ve heard that patient satisfaction with your procedure skills is very high, so many patients return. I also understand that you are a key doctor for fillers and Botox, and that you even hold a role in MIPS (Minimally Invasive Procedure Study Group), so I assume you are very committed to petite procedures. Unlike general surgery, when treating patients requesting non-invasive procedures, what do you focus on most?

I don’t think my petite procedure skills are exceptionally better than those of other board-certified plastic surgeons. Compared to surgery, petite procedures are much less difficult. I think they are an area that a board-certified plastic surgeon should generally be able to do well.

Unlike surgery, I think the important part of non-invasive procedures is deciding what needs to be done. Rather than forcing recommendations like, “Try this new treatment. It’s really good,” I do a lot of curation, such as “What should be done, when, and how, and what will not help.” With surgery, the key is performing the surgery well. But with procedures, I think it’s important to understand and guide patients well on three things: what to do, when to do it, and what not to do.

Because I explain things well from a medical standpoint rather than focusing only on procedural technique, manufacturers probably invite me often as a key doctor, since they can hear differentiated lectures.

Procedures are things you do before surgery in order to become prettier. Many patients enter through non-invasive procedures first. In that case, the key point in procedures is to tell them things like, “Ten or twenty years later, you may end up having surgery anyway, so this procedure will be meaningless if you later undergo surgery, so don’t do it; this other procedure, on the other hand, will help even if you have surgery later.” In particular, with anti-aging, patients often come already knowing that they will eventually need a full facelift surgery someday. They want to hear from the doctor, “You don’t need surgery right away; a non-invasive procedure is enough.” Keeping that in mind, I pay even more attention to curating well between various procedures and surgeries. These days there are so many good and diverse procedures that it is difficult for patients to research and study them on their own. So I think it is important, as a medical professional, to diagnose patients well, find procedures that are truly helpful, and explain them clearly.

Q. We’ve talked about a rather serious topic. Let me switch the mood with another question. I heard your MBTI is ENFJ. ENFJs are known for their tendency to share what they have with others. Maybe that’s why you are involved in so many academic society activities. In some sense, it can feel like you’re exposing your trade secrets to the outside world. Why do you take part in so many academic society activities?

Unlike in ICT, medicine does not have patents. In medicine, new techniques are commonly verified by doctors through academic societies, and other doctors cross-check them in the process before papers are published. Through that process, accumulated knowledge ends up in textbooks. Because of that, something that only one person knows as a special technique is highly likely to be a scam. Every medical technique should be shared with all doctors so everyone can use it, and it must be verified.

That’s why I think participating in academic societies—being challenged, taking questions, discussing with many doctors, and so on—makes me sharper and more sensitive, and that is what helps me grow. If I just do things alone believing that I’m right, it’s hard to realize that something is wrong until a bad result happens. But through academic societies, I can share good knowledge and experience with senior doctors or experienced colleagues, saying, “I tried this, and this happened. What do you think?”

Also, when I go to academic societies, I tend to share surgical methods and tips generously. Some people participate in academic societies for personal promotion. They want visible achievements, like being able to say, “I presented this at the conference, and I’m really good at this!” There are also some who talk about how good their surgical method is but leave out the key parts of the presentation. In my case, I explain everything without holding back, so other doctors often ask me why I share absolutely everything. (laughs) I don’t think the medical techniques and skills I have were obtained by me alone. They are based on the shoulders of giants—senior doctors, foreign doctors, papers, and textbooks—and it would be good if everyone could stand on those shoulders together, not just me. I don’t think this is competition. It’s not like patents and making tens of thousands of products. There is a limit to the number of surgeries one doctor can perform in an entire career. If I were to do it all alone, I couldn’t do everything. If the know-how I have can help fellow doctors, I’m happy.

There are patients who come to me because a director they know personally recommended me. Maybe they recommend me because they think, “Director Jo Jeong-mok is sincere, eager to learn, and good at difficult surgeries,” even if they don’t know me personally. A doctor recommending another doctor—that feels very meaningful and I’m very grateful for it. When I look at things like this, I think academic societies are not about leaking trade secrets to me, but rather about creating a virtuous cycle that eventually brings blessings back to me.

Q. I think this answer was truly a case of a wise answer to a foolish question. (laughs) Let’s move on to the next question. You have been active as a board-certified plastic surgeon for a long time and have met many patients. Among them, I’m curious whether there is a patient who stands out in your memory.

There was a patient who had a complex about having a small chest. But after getting breast augmentation surgery, that person was extremely satisfied. I think breast surgery is an operation that gives women confidence. After that, the patient started a YouTube channel, and although she had been introverted, she became more active socially and gained confidence in her relationships with friends. I remember that case because it was not just about becoming prettier on the outside, but also about changing a person’s introversion into extroversion and raising their self-esteem.

Q. I see. I’m sure there are more patients yet to come than those you have operated on so far. What kind of plastic surgeon do you want to become in the future?

I want to become a doctor who is trusted. I’m not saying I want to hear, “I’ll do everything exactly as you say, Director.” What I always want is to treat patients with sincerity, and I hope they understand that part well. Through the skills, heart, and effort I have, I want the patient to do well, and I hope they understand that. If more people can trust the direction I’m trying to take, I would be very happy. I want patients to have a happier life after surgery, and I want them to remember that meeting a doctor named Jo Jeong-mok whom they could truly trust made their lives happier.

Q. That sounds like a wonderful dream; I’m a little envious. This time, I’d like to hear your opinion as an administrator. What kind of hospital do you want Eton Plastic Surgery to become? And what kind of mindset would you like the staff at Eton Plastic Surgery to have?

I hope Eton Plastic Surgery becomes a hospital that improves day by day. I sincerely hope it does not settle for the status quo, but instead keeps asking whether there is something new or something to improve, and becomes a hospital that is differentiated from others and serves as a model. I also want all the staff who work here to live happy lives. Happiness has many elements, and beyond simply feeling good, I hope they can feel a sense of meaning in life and experience rich, meaningful daily activities at Eton Plastic Surgery.

The time we spend at work takes up a large part of life. Even if there are difficult parts, if through this work I can achieve my own growth and the hospital’s growth, I believe I will become happy. Playing can be happy too, but if you keep playing all the time, it gets boring. I think happiness comes when you accomplish something and when you help your community improve. Staff may feel tired, frustrated, annoyed, or dissatisfied while working at Eton Plastic Surgery, but I hope they can still live a life that is better than yesterday’s and leave work thinking, “I spent today happily too.” I hope that makes them want to come to work again tomorrow. (laughs)

Q. After today’s interview, when I leave work, I think I’ll be able to go home feeling that way too. Lastly, is there anything you would like to say to the readers who will read this interview in d’Arc Vol. 2?

Eton Plastic Surgery is a very unusual hospital. For the sake of patients, we use expensive materials without hesitation. We also approach things conservatively by finding the safest option possible. Even though the hospital needs to make a profit, there are cases where we do not recommend surgery. And we also provide a lot of consultations and explanations about things unrelated to surgery. Many hospitals talk about doing this kind of marketing, but we believe ours is the real thing. Of course, there are many excellent hospitals out there, but we are proud to say that Eton Plastic Surgery is a truly unusual and good hospital. When you are considering plastic surgery or aesthetic procedures, I firmly believe that Eton Plastic Surgery will be a great help in making smarter choices, happier decisions, and a better life.

The interview ended at 8:30 p.m. It was well past the time to leave work, but right after the interview, the director proceeded with filming for <Jomok Jomok TV>. After everything was finished and he said he was heading home, it was around 11 p.m. late at night. I didn’t see it myself, but I’m sure a lot of fatigue and the responsibility that comes with being a director were weighing on his shoulders. Thinking that, I felt my heart strangely tighten.

The hospital continues to flow peacefully, as always. Perhaps the reason it can flow peacefully is because everyone fulfilled their role in their own place, and because of someone’s sacrifice and initiative. With gratitude that today also passed peacefully, I conclude the interview.