Because the plastic surgery clinic is violating your right to control your image.

“The customer you are attempting to call is unavailable for the moment.” If you call her that is the message you hear. She has changed her phone number so many times even her friends do not know it anymore. She is 24-year old Shin Hyeon-jeong (a pseudonym), who has not in been touch with friends and acquantainces for over a year. Once a normal college student, she became this way over a more than two year period.

“It was a single surgery that would take away my complex and make me pretty. I wanted to end my pain and so I went to the hospital.” Ms. Shin got together the W15 million fee for the surgery and had surgery on her eyes, nose, forehead, cheekbones, and chin at a plastic surgery clinic in Apgujeong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, at the end of 2007. “The surgery was a success, let’s take a photo,” she heard several times. She had kept the surgery a secret, even from her parents, and refused to be photographed. The hospital coaxed her, “nobody else will see it, only we will have it.” Tired of having to keep refusing, Ms. Shin gave in and let them take her picture.

Ms. Shin began suffering painful aftereffects, including an ache in her chin, but told nobody about the surgery, bearing the pain all alone. But it has now been over one year. Ms. Shin was shocked and startled by what a friend said. “I saw your picture in the hospital. Was that really you? We hardly recognized you.” It was not a mere one or two people who had seen her face. People she didn’t even know took to mocking her, saying, “somehow your face looks unnatural.” Ms. Shin phoned the hospital. At first the clinic denied any such thing had happened, but on hearing her acquaintance’s name said, “we have the rights to your picture.” When she protested by saying “if I sue you you will have to remove the picture,” the clinic promised to , “keep just in our archives.”

A year passed, until in December of last year Ms. Shin was again plunged into depression after having barely pulled herself together. The clinic had placed her photo on their webpage. Afraid, she wept and wept, as their homepage showed her after the surgery with make-up and a smile. “‘If I just insist it’s not me it will be ok’ it might be ok, but the photo was uploaded without a mosaic, anybody can see it’s me.” It had already come up dozens of times on blogs and portals such as Naver and Daum.

Her world went dark. The numerous comments left under the photo made her think of dying. The final straw was the nonchalent attitude of the clinic. “We’re sorry, but if you come to the hospital we will give you a modelling fee. Or would you like more surgery?” Their lawyer said to her, “the photo is good advertising , so may we not continue using it for a modelling fee?” Last December Ms. Shin finally appealed to the committee to protect personal information of the Ministry of Public Administration (행정안전부). Ms. Shin spoke in a trembling voice. “At the clinic they seem to think they can just pay me a few million won and it will all be ok. But when I’m walking outside people I don’t know laugh at me and I wonder if they saw my picture, so I have a social phobia now. I can’t even have a boyfriend.”

Plastic surgery clinics typically use their homepages to compete for customers, and there an increasing number of cases, similar to Ms. Shin’s, where a clinic placed “before and after” photos of patients without their consent. Kang Dal-cheon, head of the Ministry’s personal information committee, said, “cases like this, where a conflict arises over a photo takeen after surgery is kept, crop up every month.” Cases of conflicts with plastic surgery conflicts increased from 1,430 in 2003 to 2,016 in 2009. It is believed that a large number of them involve photographs.

Plastic surgery clinics invovled in such disputes say they have no choice but to depend on advertising because of the fiercely competitive nature of ttheir business. One department had at a pastic surgery clinic in Apgujeong-dong said, “a lot of people who come to the clinic make the decision to have surgery after seeing phoots of other people’s results, so there is no way the hospital can ignore the photos.”

There is also the problem of insufficient legal attention being paid to advertising on internet cafes and websites. The advertising committee of the Korean Medical Association (대한의사협회), which judges clinic advertisements, announced, “currently internet advertising is being considered.’