Hang Mioku was a model and singer in South Korea, with a career that depended as much on her talent as on her image. That pressure led her into a string of cosmetic surgeries that did not stop, until surgeons, one after another, refused to operate on her again. The medical team had reached its limit, but she had not.
That was when she made an extreme decision: she began injecting cooking oil directly into her face, seeking on her own the effect that no one was willing to give her in an operating room anymore. The result was devastating. Her face swelled severely and was left disfigured, far from the face that had made her famous.
Years later, public donations made it possible to pay for several corrective surgeries in an attempt to reverse the damage. But there are wounds that the scalpel can no longer erase completely, and Hang Mioku’s case remained as an uncomfortable reminder of how far the obsession with perfection can go.
