Consultation: My Final Revision Rhinoplasty, Finally! (PART 1)

Hi everyone, I'm one-week post-op for a revision rhinoplasty surgery done in Seoul. I’m very happy with the outcome now. Despite the fact that the swelling hasn’t completely gone down, the shape of the nose is very satisfactory and exactly what I wanted. I found a very skilled surgeon to realize my ideal nose shape. It wasn't luck or the order of the universe. I rode the roller coaster of emotions to get this result at the end of the ride.



Thanks to Purseforum members' reviews, I've learnt a lot about Korean doctors, insights and tips, so I would like to share the ordeal I went through for my nose and hope it will help you all in finding a good surgeon.



Having a flat and short nose to begin with, I had my primary rhinoplasty at a famous clinic 9 years ago. From the research that time, the surgeon Dr. Jung was known as the "King of Asian Nose Jobs", a famous ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT), the president of the Asian Society of Asian Cosmetic Surgery (ASACS), and had performed 20,000 cases over the past 20 years. There were tons of surgeons in Taiwan, Singapore and China who were his students. He could communicate with me in English and Chinese pretty well and he was all friendly. I was young then and thought I was lucky to have Dr. Jung as my nose job surgeon.



I made it clear that I never wanted a dramatic change for my nose. All I wanted was a natural and more defined nose to go with my round face. However, after the 1st surgery, the nose was too tall, hard, masculine and straight. It looked like a block of wood hanging in the middle of my face. After a year or so, he performed a revision rhino for me, charging me USD$1,000 for anesthesia. The nose bridge looked more natural this time except for the fact that one nostril was round but the other one was oval after some time. So I flew to Seoul for the 3rd time to have them corrected.



After a good few years, unfortunately, my nose became odd again with these problems

- the radix being too high

-upturned nose tip

- the nostrils showing too much from the frontal view

-scar at the bottom of the nose showing more with the upturned nose tip

-the bridge still being high and narrow with the 2 layers of the 5mm-high Gore-Tex implant inside



All in all, the nose simply looked weird on my face. My friends and coworkers were so polite that they never made any comments about it. They just stared knowingly at it when they thought I wasn't looking. I felt self-conscious about my nose.



In early June, I sent him emails and it took him nearly two weeks to reply OK without answering my enquiries. So I called up the clinic and I was directed to his manager Jay Lee. He didn’t sound interested in my case and he said he was in a middle of a meeting and would return my call but he never did. I found the clinic’s Kakao, WeChat, Whatsapp contacts but they were all answered by him and he wouldn't let me talk to Dr. Jung directly. He missed my Kakao calls and even when he did, answer, he said he was busy and it was past the office hours. BTW, I once asked him if he could introduce some good clinics to me for surgeries of other body parts. He gave me the contacts but later I found that I was quoted much higher than the locals at these clinics coz without me knowing, the manager actually demanded a hefty commission fee from these clinics that he introduced but he played innocent and lied about it.



Oh did I mention the clinic’s name? It is Shimmian but I now call it [RS bleep]-mian (haha).



As you can imagine, I was really frustrated. I did a detailed research on the best rhino surgeons in Seoul and set up consultations. But I still had hope in Dr. Jung and I arranged the all other consultations around his consultation time.



On day 1, I met with 2 reputable surgeons In the morning and they both shared the same aesthetic with me that the radix was too high for me face and the tip was upturned. in the afternoon, after waiting for a little more than an hour, I got to meet Dr. Jung with a young, new consultant as the manager, Jay Lee was busy.



To my surprise, Dr. Jung found there was nothing wrong with my nose or its look on my face as many desired to have this kind of “perky” nose and high radix. But if I insisted, he could revise the nose to the way I wanted. When asked the techniques to do so, to make it look a natural radix, he proposed to remove 1 layer of the Gort-Tex implant but he made it clear that by doing this, my nose’d be 50% lower, no in between, and the curve between the radix and bridge would be gone. To correct the upturned nose tip and improve the nasal tip projection, he proposed to relocate the ear cartilage graft from the nose tip to the columella area. At the same time, he warned me that I would end up getting a very straight and long nose which would age me a lot. He insisted on using Gore-Tex(he said it was 20 times more expensive than silicone) over silicone or dermal fat grafts that I suggested

After 10 minutes, the manager Jay barged in to rush Dr. Jung to wrap up the consultation as there were other patients waiting outside.



Then he got impatient with my questions and said no more discussions needed. He concluded that he would take 1 layer of Gore-Tex out & relocate the ear cartilage. Then before I knew it, I was sent out of his office.


After the utter shock, I could feel anger boiling up inside me.



Well, I deserved to be treated like dirt by him. I should’ve seen it coming, no excuses. I thought he was a skilled and friendly plastic surgeon until I saw how much greed behind that friendliness and how little he cared about his patients.



I knew I would NEVER let him touch my face again!



I called off the surgery scheduled the next day, binged read rhinoplasty research papers and posts on different forums without getting a shut eye for two nights before I could shortlist real plastic surgeons specialized in revision rhinoplasty. I will continue with my rhino doctor search in PART 2. Stay tuned!