Guide · Safety
With the right surgeon, as safe as anywhere in the world. With the wrong clinic, less safe than staying home. The difference is almost entirely in the checking — here is how to do it.
With the right surgeon, it can be. A board-certified plastic surgeon who performs facelifts every week, in a facility with a dedicated anaesthesiologist and an inpatient ward, can be as safe as anywhere in the world. The danger is Korea's large low-end market, where many cosmetic doctors are not specialist plastic surgeons. All surgery still carries risk.
This guide is about the checking. It is written for Australians who are seriously considering the trip and want to understand the landscape honestly, including the risks that no amount of vetting removes.
Korea performs aesthetic surgery at a scale few countries approach, and Seoul in particular has produced a generation of surgeons for whom the facelift is a daily discipline. That volume is the source of the expertise — and also of the problem. Because the market is so large and so lucrative, it has attracted a great many clinics competing on price and marketing rather than on surgical standards.
The single most important thing to understand is this: in Korea, any licensed doctor may legally perform cosmetic procedures. A doctor whose training is in an unrelated field can open an aesthetic clinic, and many do. A board-certified plastic surgeon — in Korean, 성형외과 전문의 — has completed years of specialist surgical training and passed the national board examination. The two are not the same, and the clinic's website will rarely make the distinction for you.
Ask directly whether the surgeon is a 성형외과 전문의, and ask for the credential to be shown. A reputable clinic will not hesitate. Vagueness — "our doctors are highly experienced" — is an answer in itself.
Ten years in specialist practice is our minimum. So is a facelift volume of one to two hundred a year. A surgeon who performs the procedure weekly has encountered the anatomical variations and the complications that a surgeon performing it monthly has only read about.
Deep-plane and high-SMAS facelifts reposition the deeper structures of the face rather than tightening the skin. They take longer, require more skill, and produce results that look natural and last. A clinic that cannot tell you which technique it uses, or that offers a "quick" lift, is telling you something.
Ask who gives the anaesthesia and whether they stay for the entire procedure. The answer should be a dedicated anaesthesiologist, present throughout — not the operating surgeon managing sedation between steps. This is one of the clearest dividing lines between clinics that take safety seriously and clinics that do not.
Where will you sleep the night after surgery, and who will be there? We require an inpatient ward with clinical staff overnight. We also send our own carer to stay beside you that night, so you are never alone and never without someone who speaks your language.
Ask what happens if the result needs adjustment, and get the answer in writing before you pay. Established clinics have clear policies; evasiveness here is a serious warning.
This sounds like an odd thing to want, but it is one of the most reassuring. Our surgeons and their anaesthesiologists will not proceed if, on the day, they judge surgery unsafe for you — for blood pressure, for an undisclosed condition, for anything. A clinic that would operate regardless is a clinic that prioritises the booking over the patient.
Very cheap quotes usually fail several of these checks at once; our cost comparison explains why the price and the standards tend to move together.
Not entirely. Nearly every clinic that receives foreign patients provides an interpreter, but that interpreter is employed by the clinic. Their role, however kind they are personally, is to help the clinic secure and manage the booking. When a surgeon hedges, softens or adds a caveat, the clinic's interpreter has every incentive to smooth it over.
This is why Chloé Privé provides its own interpreter at every consultation and every check-up — someone who works for you, whose job is to make sure every question you have is asked and every answer is fully understood, including the uncomfortable ones. In our experience it changes the quality of the consultation more than any other single thing.
A facelift is real surgery, and it carries real risks with any surgeon, in any country. You should hear them from your surgeon in your own consultation, but in general terms they include:
Good surgeons reduce these risks; they do not eliminate them. Anyone who tells you otherwise, in Korea or Australia, is not being straight with you.
This is the question every serious client asks, and it deserves a plain answer.
Everything above is what we check on your behalf, before we will arrange a single consultation. The full list of our standards — all seven, all required — is set out on how we choose your surgeon. Chloe selects every surgeon personally and conducts every consultation herself.
You should not have to take our word for any of this. Two independent places to start:
This guide is general information, not medical advice. Chloe is not a medical practitioner; the risks and suitability of surgery for you are matters for your surgeon and, if you wish, an independent second opinion. Outcomes vary between individuals.
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