Exploring Korea’s Illegal Tattooing Scene

Hosted by Grace Neutral

“Grace Neutral explores how younger generations are challenging traditional views around
beauty and body image across the world. In the first four episodes of Beyond Beauty, we follow Grace to South Korea as she investigates the ways in which Seoul’s youth conform and challenge mainstream beauty ideals. Although it’s socially acceptable for teenagers to have cosmetic surgery within its six billion dollar domestic beauty industry, it is illegal to be a tattoo artist. From underground tattoo studios to specialist club nights, Grace meets the young South Koreans embracing alternative ideas of beauty and discovers the impact it has on their lives.” – (Youtube i-D)

As an individual in a first world (Australian) society self expression has become relevant through visual aesthetics and ones choice to choose most importantly what they decide to do with their body. It is interesting to watch this short ten minute documentary based around a country where tattoos are seen not only as taboo but degrading and criminally related. I believe this relates back to present day society where our image of beauty is still so distorted around what the media releases and chooses us to view. It should also be noted that the country ‘Grace Neutral’ narrated this documentary in (South Korea) is also the number one leading country for cosmetic surgery in fact “50% of 20-year-old women in South Korea are reported having undergone plastic surgery”. 

world-plastic-surgery-stats

It baffles me how out of these two body modifications one is seen as ‘dirty’ and the other has become normalized.
A women Neutral interviews in the documentary states that if she wasn’t allowed to continue receiving plastic surgery she “([I]) would die”. This documentary really got me into what would influence a whole generation to change their physical identity- the answer Neutral found was ‘Kpop’. In South Korea K pop is more than just a form of popular music it is an industry which has immense influence on it’s consumers, and this can visually be seen to the extent of physical transformation.
I also want to note that this documentary has given me an insight into my visual and audio essay, the presentation, the visuals and overall the dramatic and lasting feel it left on me once it had finished. It was definitely a feeling of wanting more, luckily i-D (the youtube channel which uploads Neutrals content) had a few other visually stunning documentaries based around the fixation on perfection (created by the South Korean media), This makes me question how one whole country can be influenced vastly more than another- this is a subject I will want to look into further and hopefully find some results.