User:Vnzk9696/sandbox

Definition
Ulzzang (얼짱) is a Korean slang, an abbreviated term that was invented on the Internet. It is pronounced as eol-jjang to be specific. In more detail, the Korean term ‘Ul-‘comes from ‘Ul-Ggul’ (meaning ‘Face’) and the second part of the term ‘-zzang’ is also slang word that originates from the Internet which is an adverb used to emphasize something. The word ‘-zzang’ can refer to ‘really, very, best’ in English word. For two words combined, the abbreviation ‘Ulzzang’ refers to a literal meaning for “best face”, “good-looking” or “facial beauty". In addition, ‘Ulzzang’ is a word referring to a ‘person’ who looks beautiful or pretty and has an ideal look that others pursue for.

Origin
The origin of the term is introduced in the early 2000s, from calling a pretty person ‘Ulzzang’ on one of social media in Korea. The popularizing process of Ulzzang was facilitated by the increased uses of the social media. Back then, the examples of popular social media in Korea included; Internet cafes and blogs, which were the online spaces where people could freely upload their own selfies. These online communities began to be obsessive with the looks of certain users, judging their appearances and sharing their photos within online spaces, which led to more popularity and reputations for those so-called ‘ulzzang’ people. Also, the process of judging appearances is viewed as a sort of a ‘competition’ in the online world, and the more the people get ‘likes’, meant more attention they get, and finally, they will become ulzzang. Also, sometimes few of influential ulzzangs would be chosen by media companies to debut as celebrities. The most popular ulzzangs were known to have fandom consisted of more than 260,000 people. Other words that are similar to Ulzzang include Momzzang (몸짱), Hipzzang (힙짱), and Gangzzang (강짱), etc., with same wording structures but with different meanings – depending on which word comes before -zzang. These terms share one characteristic in common; their purposes are to praise appearances of people, focusing on a particular body part, either related to face or body shape. The word ‘ulzzang’ is considered outdated and later developed to a new term ‘hunnam’ (훈남) or ‘hunnyu’ (훈녀), also recurring the idea of good-looking as a main component.

TV Program
There were TV series that consisted of ulzzang materials in the early 2000s – during the time when ‘ulzzang’ reached the highest peak of popularity from the public. They first started with Ulzzang Shidae (얼짱시대) season 1 in 2009 and ended with season 7 in 2013. The Korean term ‘shidae’ means ‘generation, time period’ and with two words combined, it has a literal meaning of ‘ulzzang generation, ulzzang era’, which indicates the time period when Koreans prioritized how people look. The program was composed of one male host followed by many famous ulzzang guests. Through the numbers of series, the program kept several popular people as fixed guests and changed other guests who were not as popular as them. Additionally, the program was a variety TV show that consisted of many contents, including dancing, singing, or just talking, etc. and its purposes were to define the ‘online’ ulzzangs into ‘offline’ space, by inviting them to the reality show. As the ulzzangs were only appeared on the Internet, the TV programs were to solve curiosities of fandom, how they would look in real life, as different from online spaces.

Examples of Notorious Ulzzang

 * 1) 	홍영기 – Hong Young Gi
 * 2) 	유혜주 – Yu Hae Ju
 * 3) 	정준영 – Jung Jun Young
 * 4) 	강혁민 – Kang Hyuk Min
 * 5) 	한아름송이 – Han Arum Songi

Social Paradigm
The term ulzzang contributed to constructing social paradigm between teenagers, from the desires to become one of them – not just ulzzangs but celebrities as well. The hopes of teenagers to achieve ideal looks alike to ulzzangs led to bigger social issues related to “lookism” in Korea. For instances, plastic surgery including aesthetic medicine, negative representations of women, or fake profiles online, etc..

Cosmetic Surgery
Firstly, plastic surgery (or cosmetic surgery) in Korea has become an essential and common thing among both genders, especially in teenagers. Their interests in improving their appearances not only ended up in make-up or wearing fashionable outfits, but also changing their natural looks in an artificial way. The plastic surgery companies are commonly found in the capital city of Korea, Seoul, and especially located in Gangnam, Seoul. Traditionally, cosmetic surgeries were interpreted as something unacceptable in Korean society, as they depicted for the artificiality of beauty that is man-made, and therefore, people were less interested in them (Wong, 2018). However, the wave of cosmetic surgery has attacked Korea in influences of ulzzangs, and later on, the influences of ‘Hallyu’ (Korean Wave) of Korean celebrities and idols took parts of the impacts as well. As relation to cosmetic surgery, ‘aesthetic medicine’ is a term that consists of both surgical procedures and non-surgical treatments targeting for beauty. The cosmetic-related surgeries include such as breast augmentation or eyelid surgeries, etc. and the other non-surgical treatments include Botox ingestion or mesotherapy and so on. The problem of plastic surgery in Korea is that people become addicted to the surgery and never be satisfied with their looks, resulting in various health issues, as well as harmful side effects of the surgeries. These negative aspects of the surgeries include several risks such as “the potential medical risk of the surgery, the social acceptance risk – from family or friends – or the potential loss of self-identity risk, etc.”.

Representations of Women
Secondly, the idea of lookism contributes to the representations of women as being ‘objectified’ as ‘dolls’ rather than human beings, in regards to ‘cuteness. This process of ‘dollification’ of women is advanced by ulzzang culture in Korea where society restricts women in the frame of Cyberfeminism online. The women are strictly considered as a submissive figure from a patriarchal society, and often women are treated as objects, especially the Asian girls. The Asian femininity represent cute-looking ‘living dolls’ where men exploit sexual fetishistic desires from the erotic figures of women. Also, it is common in Korea that women use photoshops to edit their selfies before uploading them on social media. These uses of photoshops also stem from ulzzangs, as most of ulzzangs used photoshops to beautify their selfies. The process of editing is easily done by cell-phone camera applications today, for instance, SNOW – which enables people to modify their faces using many different functions of the app, including better skin, larger eyes, or smaller nose, etc. The editing of women’s photos implies that women’s desires to achieve ‘best’ looks as regards to previous standards set by ulzzangs and other celebs, which means the representations of women are heavily based on ‘looks’ in Korea.