It seems like the Koreans are always in the news for their outrageous plastic surgeries. The latest to get on board is young South Korean model Hong Yuh Reum, who completely changed her face to resemble her idol – supermodel Miranda Kerr.
Reum was recently featured on a Korean TV show called Alien Virus, which features all sorts of unusual guests. She admitted that Kerr was her only inspiration for going under the knife. “It really struck me when I first saw her in a magazine,” said Reum. “She has a baby face but she’s very sexy. I knew I wanted to be like her!”
It’s quite common for young girls around the world to have a favorite actress or model they would want to look like. But to actually go through plastic surgery to have someone else’s face sounds extreme. It might be the highest compliment to Kerr, but Reum has really taken a risk here. Apart from the fact that the procedure could have gone wrong, it could have seriously jeopardized her health as well.
But Reum isn’t bothered by these risks at all. She expressed a lot of praise for plastic surgery, attributing her own success as a model to having gone under the knife. One thing that seems to have worked in her favor is that she underwent minimal surgery. She settled for just being an Asian version of Kerr, instead of an exact duplicate.
Reum is so passionate about her Australian counterpart that she has Kerr’s posters plastered all over her bedroom walls. She has had her eyes and nose done to make her look more like her idol. She wears blue contact lenses and copies Kerr’s outfits, hair and make up. In fact, Reum has dyed her hair golden brown to match Kerr. She’s even disappointed that Kerr isn’t more popular in South Korea, but says she has had international success as a model, thanks to her uncanny resemblance to Miranda Kerr.
The show also had a segment on how other Koreans often mistook Reum to be a foreigner. Strangers spoke to her in English and one old lady simply pointed, thinking that she did not understand the local language. Not being recognized by your own people? I guess those small tweaks Hong Yuh Reum sais she had done to her face made a bigger impact than she thought.