Cosmetic surgery clinics in Seoul's posh Apgujeong area are being flooded with bookings for the Lunar New Year holiday next week. Reservations are reportedly up 20 per cent in this Mecca of South Korean plastic surgery, mainly because of the unusually long holiday this year.
With the three-day break beginning on Tuesday, many companies are closing for the whole week. Add in weekends, and people are actually away from work for nine days in total.
Many young South Korean women - including college and even secondary school students - are using the opportunity to have facelifts and other forms of cosmetic surgery as they will have time to recover before returning to work.
In fact, cosmetic surgery is now huge business here, and is no longer monopolised by film stars and other celebrities.
Even men are getting in on the act, as the way a person looks takes on increasing importance in evaluating their ability and even character. One survey by a cosmetic surgery clinic shows that 60 per cent of South Korean women do not mind if their boyfriends have a facelift.
One extreme example of the obsession is a woman in her early 40s whose face has ballooned to three times the normal size after she injected herself with silicone whenever she heard voices in her head urging her to do so. In an interview with a local television station, she admitted being addicted to surgery and said she had also had numerous facelifts.