Facial Contouring: Can You Become as Beautiful as Actress Shin Se-kyung? - Explained by a Specialist

Hello, this is Director Jo Hyun-woo of Ibjok Plastic Surgery.

One of the things people consistently ask during facial contouring consultations is, “Among celebrities who had facial contouring, did celebrity ~ really have facial contouring?” ^^; People also bring photos of celebrities with beautiful face shapes, like Shin Se-kyung and Oh Yeon-seo, and ask whether the same face shape can be achieved through facial contouring surgery.

If you ask about a specific celebrity and whether they had facial contouring surgery, it can be difficult for me to answer definitively unless I operated on that person myself. But it is true that facial contouring surgery is one of the procedures many celebrities undergo.

Facial contouring surgery has the advantage of not being obvious and allowing gradual changes.

To explain the surgery first: facial contouring surgery is a procedure that refines the outer line of the face. In simple terms, it is surgery that smooths the facial contours by pushing in or shaving down areas that protrude unevenly.

When the cheekbones and jaw are highly developed, it can produce a dramatic effect. But if the bones are not greatly developed, it can still create change by refining the face in millimeter-scale increments.

To explain with cheekbone surgery as an example: during the operation, the cheekbones are reduced by about 5 mm on both sides for the average woman. In numerical terms, that may sound very small. But if a person’s face width is 16 cm, that means a 6% reduction in face width, which is roughly equivalent to a person who is 160 cm tall becoming 150 cm tall.

Can you feel that it is actually a fairly large change? Just as wearing low heels or adding an insole to become 2–3 cm taller makes a noticeable difference, face shape is the same.

I’ll show you a patient’s photos as well.

This is a preoperative photo of a patient who underwent three facial contouring procedures—cheekbone reduction, square jaw surgery, and chin surgery—as well as augmentation rhinoplasty three months ago. Looking at the photo, the face is actually small and the contours are not greatly developed, so it is not really a face shape that necessarily needs surgery. During the consultation, this patient specifically asked to be made to look like Shin Se-kyung’s face shape. ^^

As you can see, the 45-degree cheekbone below the outer corner of the eye protrudes slightly, and the chin tip sticks out. Also, the area beside the nose is sunken, making the midface look compressed.

The curvature is not severe, but because the patient wanted a perfectly smooth face shape like Shin Se-kyung’s, we inserted an implant to raise the sunken area beside the nose and only slightly refined the uneven parts.

Then I’ll show you the postoperative photos.

This photo was taken three months after surgery. Looking at it like this, you may think there is not much change, but

When placed side by side, you can see that the contours visible before surgery have disappeared, the shadows on the face have been reduced, and the face looks more refined after surgery.

If you compare them, the difference is very small, right? The cheekbone surgery was performed by pushing the bone segment inward without removing it, and the amount of square jaw reduction was also small, so it was only a minor refinement.

However, as the previously uneven angles of the face became smoother after surgery, the image clearly changed to a softer one. If you look up Shin Se-kyung, you can also see that her jaw is not pointed but smooth, and overall she has a soft face shape. ^^

As such, facial contouring surgery can produce dramatic results when the contours are highly developed, but as in this case, it is also a procedure that can change the overall impression of the face even with only a small amount of resection. For celebrities who are filmed from all angles in front of the camera, these subtle differences seem especially important, which may be why many choose to have it done.

Of course, in this patient’s case as well, I do tell patients that if it is not a serious issue, there is no need to undergo the procedure. But if it must be done, it should be performed within a range that does not damage the face’s natural beauty.

For people like the patient shown here, whose contours are not severely developed, even slight over-resection can make the face look unnatural, so caution is necessary. Since I explained earlier why millimeter-level differences matter using height as an example, I think you now understand.

I’m attaching a video for those who need it.

Today, we looked at facial contouring and celebrities, along with actual patient photos. If you leave any questions in the comments, I’ll refer to them in my next post. Thank you. ^^