"The (surgery) scar is gradually fading, and my overall facial contour looks smooth and well-defined, so I'm satisfied." Person A said the surgery was performed at View Plastic Surgery in Gangnam District, Seoul, and posted the above under the title "Two-month review after contouring surgery" on a Naver cafe. It seemed like a voluntary review, but it was not. According to an investigation by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, Person A had a contract with the hospital to receive a partial refund of the surgery cost.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said on the 12th that it caught three plastic surgery clinics in Gangnam, Seoul, that provided compensation such as surgery fee discounts to promotional models and had them write surgery reviews on internet cafes and medical beauty apps as if they were voluntary. The clinics in question are View Plastic Surgery, AB Plastic Surgery Clinic, and DA Plastic Surgery. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) ordered corrective action for the three clinics. In particular, during the sanction process, it also ordered View Plastic Surgery, which continued the violations, to disclose the violations on its website and elsewhere.
According to the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC), the three plastic surgery clinics selected promotional models through their websites from 2018 to May this year. They then signed contracts under which they collected a certain amount as a deposit from the promotional models and refunded the deposit if the models posted monthly reviews of their hospital use online for one year after surgery. In this process, the clinics managed the reviews by requiring the promotional models to include a specified length and before-and-after photos. If a promotional model did not write a review or deleted it, the deposit was not refunded.
In effect, the promotional models received economic benefits such as surgery fee discounts. The amounts varied widely by patient, with confirmed cases ranging from as little as 60,000 won to as much as 3.3 billion won in discounts. Even so, the three clinics did not instruct them to note this fact in their reviews. This could mislead consumers into thinking the reviews were voluntary and uncompensated. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) therefore applied a suspected violation of Article 3(1)2 of the Act on Fair Labeling and Advertising, which prohibits deceptive labeling and advertising.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said, "We shared with the Ministry of Health and Welfare the suspected violations of the Medical Service Act confirmed during this investigation," adding, "We requested necessary measures to prevent consumer harm."