Review of My ID is Gangnam Beauty / 내 아이디는 강남미인

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m watching.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

This blog post is a part of the series I’ve been running on my blog where I revisit old haunts. I’ve been watching Korean dramas since I was thirteen years old, as a middle schooler watching The Heirs for the first time, and I’ve come so far since. I lived in Korea twice for study abroad, in Busan and Seoul, and I speak a decent amount of Korean. It was interesting the second time I studied abroad that I realized I could really start understanding the Korean in the dramas.

Anyways, I’ve been revisiting all of my old haunts recently. My blog feed has literally just been Korean dramas as of late because of this, as I’ve been on such a roll. I’m writing this many months before the post comes out, as I’ve been creating backlogs of content for years, but today’s post is about an old favorite: My ID is Gangnam Beauty.

My opinions on plastic surgery are mixed. I’m all about choice and having the decision to do what you want, but I feel like this is still very much a hierarchal system, and whatever people say about beauty and choice is feminism. I think in some contexts it’s still heavily patriarchal, and while this is not the argument I would dive into because I don’t have the facts, I do wonder in Korea how much of plastic surgery is perpetuated by a patriarchal system.

Those musings aside, let’s get into the review of My ID is Gangnam Beauty and my second watch.

A young woman gets plastic surgery to feel better about her looks, and finds herself in different situations in college.

Our female lead in this drama is Kang Mi-rae, and we focus largely on her perspective. As a young girl she was often bullied because of her looks (as this is Korea, after all), and it leads her to have a major desire to get plastic surgery as soon as she’s able and can afford it.

She decides to get the surgery before going to college, and she’s quite happy with the results at first. For the first time, she feels more confident with her looks and appearance, and she heads off to college with these feelings about herself. She is going to study chemistry, as she wants to become a perfumer and create perfumes that are tailored to individuals.

However, while people are very interested in her looks at the university, there are a small minority of voices making fun of Mi-rae behind her back. Because she had so much plastic surgery, and because it’s kind of obvious, she is called a Gangnam eonni or surgery monster, which is going to affect her mentally in a different way.

No matter what she does about her looks people are going to come after her, and this really impacts Mi-rae’s mental state. Things are about to change for her when she runs into her middle school classmate Do Kyung-seok, who’s also in her department. He’s not the most friendly person around, but slowly but surely he begins to thaw, especially when he gets romantically involved with Mi-rae.

Some of the side plots include a mean girl that’s also in her class, Soo-ha, who’s nice to Mi-rae’s face but is actually the epitome of two-faced. There’s also a love triangle with Mi-rae going on throughout the series, as Woo-young, the graduate assistant for the department, likes her as well.

While romance might seem like the forefront of this drama, as it’s a Korean drama, I feel like the focus is actually more on Mi-rae’s journey to loving herself and her life. Plastic surgery isn’t going to fix all of her problems, especially when she does get it and is bullied for getting it.

She needs to learn to love herself at the end of the day, and become more confident in her own skin no matter what she looks like. That’s a big lesson from this drama, as well as seeing her succeed in college as she chases after her dreams, the dominoes falling in place as she hurdles past any obstacles that get in her way.

Overall Thoughts

To me, this is such a solid drama. I liked this one a lot more than True Beauty, if we’re going to be honest, even though Cha Eun-woo basically plays the same character in both shows. I think the college setting allows our protagonist to explore more than high school, as college is a unique place where people tend to discover themselves more.

I also find myself curious as plastic surgery as the driver of the show’s conflict at times. It shows how it won’t fix everything for people who get it, and that running away from your problems, especially when it comes to self-esteem, might actually just create the same cycles.

Anyways, this has aged well. I can’t believe this came out seven years ago (at the time of typing this), as it feels like such a large amount of time hasn’t passed. I feel old now, even though I’m in my mid-twenties.

I say go watch this one if you’re interested and haven’t seen it already (or want to rewatch it if you have). I think it’s pretty compelling and worth giving a shot.

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