Choosing a surgeon
Choosing a surgeonSeven questions, and what a real answer sounds like.
Written to be used on any surgeon, including this one. Each question is followed by why it matters, what a substantive answer contains, and how to check the answer without taking the surgeon's word for it. If a clinic cannot survive these questions, that is worth knowing before a deposit rather than after an operation.
- In one line
- Seven questions to put to any surgeon before a forehead lift, malar reduction or revision rhinoplasty, with what a substantive answer contains.
- Whom it suits
- Patients comparing clinics, including patients comparing this one against others.
- Whom it does not
- Anyone wanting a shortlist rather than a method of judging — this page gives criteria, not names.
- What this rests on
- Four public registries let the answers be checked independently: PubMed, KIPRIS, KCI and Korea’s Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service.
Written and medically reviewed by Dr. Jung Su Lee, M.D., Ph.D., board-certified plastic surgeon · Last checked 13 September 2026
The operations on this site are the ones a patient cannot judge
A forehead lift happens under the scalp; a malar reduction happens inside bone; a revision happens inside scar tissue somebody else created. None of it is visible, none of it is reversible on demand, and the photographs a patient is shown were chosen by the person being judged. So the choice has to be made on the parts of a surgeon's record that were dated, indexed or named by somebody else.
The questionsAsk these, in this order
01How many of these have you done, and where is that number written down?
A figure spoken in a consultation room cannot be checked and costs nothing to say. A published series carries a date, a defined cohort, a method and a journal that accepted it — and it can still be read twenty years later.
A real answer Names a paper, a congress presentation or a registry, with enough detail that you can find it: the journal, the year, the number of patients, and whether the surgeon was first author or one of six.
How to checkSearch the surgeon's name on PubMed yourself. Korean journals are indexed on KCI. If nothing comes up, that is not disqualifying — most good surgeons do not publish — but then the number you were given has no source, and should be treated as one.
02Which layer does the operation enter, and why that one?
It separates a surgeon who thinks anatomically from one who thinks in procedure names. The layer decides where the nerves are, what holds the result, and what the recovery will feel like — and it is chosen before the incision, not discovered during it.
A real answerNames the plane and what lies immediately above and below it, and says what the alternative plane would have cost. A surgeon who describes the route rather than the brand name of the operation has walked it.
How to checkYou are not checking the anatomy, you are checking whether the answer is specific. Vague answers to a specific question are the finding.
03Whom does this operation not suit?
The most diagnostic question on this page. A surgeon who cannot name the faces the method fails on has either not met them or is not counting them. Experience shows up as boundaries far more reliably than as advantages.
A real answerDescribes two or three specific presentations the method is wrong for, and what would be done instead for those faces — a different approach, a different operation, or none.
How to checkRead the clinic's own written material. If every page lists advantages and no page lists limits, the answer you were given in the room was for you alone.
04What is the trade-off I will actually notice?
Every one of these operations takes something in exchange. Numbness across the scalp for months. A forehead that becomes slightly wider rather than shorter. An ear that hurts and has a fold in it because cartilage was taken from it. A tip that turns up when an over-projected implant comes out. Patients are rarely surprised by the operation; they are surprised by the trade-off nobody named.
A real answerNames the trade-off before you ask twice, gives a time course in months rather than days, and distinguishes what is expected from what should be reported.
How to checkRead what patients wrote afterwards, on a platform the clinic does not control, and look for the complaints rather than the praise. Recurring complaints that the clinic never mentions are the gap between the consultation and the recovery.
05If this goes wrong, who fixes it — and have you fixed other surgeons' work?
Revision is a different skill from primary surgery, not a harder version of it. It begins as a reading of what the last operation did: where the old osteotomy ran, what was left behind, what adhered. A surgeon who only does primary cases will refer you on, which is honest but means the person operating on you the second time will not be the person who knows your face.
A real answerSays plainly whether they take revisions, and if so describes how a revision assessment differs from a first consultation. If they do not, they say so.
How to checkPublished revision series are rare and easy to verify. So is the opposite: a clinic whose written material never mentions revision.
06What will you examine before you propose a plan?
A plan offered from photographs, or from a glance, is a plan for an average face. Bone needs imaging; mixed layers after filler or fat need ultrasound; a nose operated on before needs an account of what was put in it and what is left.
A real answerLists the examinations and says what each one would change about the plan. Imaging that is taken but never discussed with you is decoration.
How to checkAsk to be shown the findings and to have them explained before the plan is proposed. A clinic that reads the images with you is a clinic that used them.
07Who will be holding the instrument?
In a country with large clinics and high volumes, the surgeon who consults is not always the surgeon who operates. This is the one question on the list that is about neither anatomy nor experience, and it is the one most worth asking in writing.
A real answerNames the operating surgeon, in writing, before the deposit — and says who else will be in the room and what they will do.
How to checkAsk for it on the consent form and on the estimate. In Korea you can confirm that a named doctor is licensed and registered at that institution through the national health insurance service's institution lookup.
Answers that should worry youFour things that are said when the record is thin
A price before the findings
A number given before anything has been examined is a number set by the marketing, not by the face. It also means the plan will be fitted to the quotation rather than the quotation to the plan.
A count with no source
“Ten thousand cases” is not a claim; it is decoration — there is nowhere to look it up and no definition of what was counted. A smaller number with a citation is worth more than a large one without.
“Everyone is a candidate”
No operation suits every face. A clinic that never turns anyone away is not more capable than one that does; it is less selective, which is a different thing, and the difference lands on the patients who should have been turned away.
Pressure attached to a discount
A price you are told expires today, a figure produced only once you are in the chair, a decision asked for before you leave the room, a deposit taken before imaging. None of these is about surgery. A published fee with a published end date is a different thing, and you can check it against the clinic’s own page before you travel; what should worry you is the clock that starts when you sit down. The one reliable sign of a good consultation is that you leave it able to decide later.
Turned on ourselvesThis clinic's answers, and where to check each one
The questions above are worth nothing if the site that published them cannot answer them. Each answer here links to the thing that proves it, and every one of those things was dated, indexed or named by somebody outside this clinic.
01 · The numbers, and their sources
32 patients in the first series, December 1999 to August 2001, in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 2003, as first author. 11 revision cases, 2013, as sole author. 261 cases of the L-rotation technique, 2021, as first author. Three separate studies, not one running total — the counts are not added together, and the site says so wherever they appear.
02 · The layer
One temporal incision, two dissection planes separated from it — one to the zygomatic arch, one to the zygomatic body. Written out on the Techniques page, and set down in an American textbook under the surgeon's own name.
03 · Whom it does not suit
Every technique page here carries that paragraph: a large movement or rigid fixation that calls for the intraoral approach instead; an eyelid problem a brow operation will not answer; a nose whose remaining tissue does not support another operation yet.
04 · The trade-offs
Scalp numbness that returns over months, a forehead that can widen slightly, the ear's cost when cartilage is taken from it, a tip that rotates upward after a high implant is removed. All four are on the Questions page — and the patient reviews include the ones where those trade-offs were the thing the writer regretted.
05 · Revision
The revision malarplasty series was published as sole author in 2013, and a presentation on revision jaw contouring came nine years before it. Noses operated on many times are within scope, and the seven checks made before a further operation is offered are listed rather than implied.
06 · What is examined
Examination, 3D CT, and ultrasound where layers have been mixed — all on the same floor as the consulting room, and read with the patient before a plan is proposed.
07 · Who operates
Two chief surgeons, and this site carries only Dr. Lee's record; the two surgeons' publications are never combined. Which of them will operate is settled at the consultation.
The record, item by item What each operation does and does not do What patients wrote, including the complaintsFour registries, none of them ours
Everything below can be searched from another country, in English, by someone who has never heard of this clinic.
01PubMed — the papers, indexed by the US National Library of Medicine
Search the author name and the procedure. Four of the papers on this site are indexed there, with the journal, the year and the co-authors as they were published.
02KIPO — the instrument's registrations, held by the Korean Intellectual Property Office
The J-saw is a registered design (no. 0331118, 2003) and a registered trademark (no. 0560740, 2003), both in the surgeon's own name. No patent is claimed, and the site says that rather than letting “registered” be read as “patented”.
03KCI — the Korean journals, indexed by the National Research Foundation of Korea
Four of the papers are indexed on KCI. KCI is where a reader outside Korea can confirm that those journals and those issues exist.
04The institution lookup — who is licensed, and where
Korea's Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service publishes which doctors are registered at which institution. It is the answer to question seven that does not depend on the clinic.
Nothing on this page is specific to this clinic except the section that names its own answers. It is written to be used elsewhere, because a patient who asks these seven questions at three clinics will learn more than one who reads three websites.
Leave able to decide later.
A consultation here takes examination, imaging and an explanation with its limits attached. Nothing is booked on the day unless the patient asks for it, and where the findings say that not operating now is the better course, that is said first.
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