Crossing south over the Han River, which bisects Seoul, will land you in Gangnam. (Gang means river, nam means south.) A little smaller than the island of Manhattan, it’s the Seoul district that many of us know thanks to Psy. In Gangnam, streets widen to 10 lanes and are lined with glossy multi-story mixed-use towers, almost always with a franchise coffee shop on the ground floor. Apgujeong, perhaps its wealthiest ward, has so many luxury retail and fancy-car showrooms that it resembles a city-size mall. At night, some of the buildings look like elaborate art installations, their façades changing colors every 10 seconds, putting on free light shows for the crawling traffic out front.
Gangnam’s posh Apgujeong and Sinsa wards are also home to an astounding concentration of South Korea’s world-leading plastic-surgery businesses. This has earned it nicknames like the Beauty Belt, the Improvement Quarter, or simply, Plastic Surgery Street (a misnomer—the area reaches far beyond a single street). In 2020, according to the National Tax Service of Korea, there were 1,008 total plastic-surgery clinics in the country. Of them, 538 were located in Seoul, and around 400 of those were in Gangnam. Signs on the sides of Gangnam buildings list different plastic-surgery practices, often occupying every floor of 15-story buildings. Their English names sound like promises: Elevate. Solutions. Reborn. Feel So Good.
