How Korea’s first ‘body positive’ influencer, Park I-seul, is using Instagram and YouTube to share fashion tips

Park I-seul once aspired to be a model with a beautiful, “ideal” body.

She resorted to excessive dieting to achieve this dream, but this only led to eating disorders by her early twenties.

While combating eating disorders, Park went back to the start and thought about what had ruined her health, and realised that beauty is about more than body measurements.

At the time, the 25-year-old learned about “body positivity,” a worldwide social movement which calls on people to love and appreciate their bodies regardless of size.

“I learned about body positivity and plus-size models through Instagram, and took courage from a message to love yourself as you are,” Park said.

This change in thinking instilled in her a desire to become a model regardless of her figure.

“I viewed lots of posts on overseas Instagram accounts and learned that a variety of people regardless of their height, weight or physical disability are working as models,” she said. “So, I decided to become Korea’s first ‘natural-size’ model, and began modelling early last year.”