North Korea’s Plastic Surgery Law: A Socialist Beauty
North Korea quietly passed a law in 2016 that regulates where and under what conditions plastic surgery can be attempted, and puts limits on some elective cosmetic procedures.
The law was included in a database of North Korean laws loaded onto a new North Korean smartphone that 38 North’s NK TechLab project obtained in late 2024.
The Plastic Surgery Treatment Law (성형외과치료법) was passed at a meeting of the standing committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly on November 23, 2016, and later amended at similar meetings on June 23, 2019, and February 6, 2024. On all three occasions, state media reported on the meetings but did not mention that a law on plastic surgery was passed or amended.
Little is known about the use of plastic surgery in North Korea, but the existence of the law indicates that legitimate procedures or issues with unsanctioned surgery are common enough that regulation was needed.
Plastic Surgery Treatment Law
The law provides a framework under which plastic surgery can take place in North Korea. It defines the people and institutions that can perform it, permitted procedures for patients, and how it is supervised.
Interestingly, the law appears to allow plenty of room for elective cosmetic procedures—and even justifies them.
The law says plastic surgery is being developed by the state so that “people can enjoy a happy and civilized life with a healthy and beautiful appearance” and that doing so is “an inherent demand of our country’s popular masses-centered socialist system.”
“The state should continuously develop plastic surgery treatment to serve the purpose of treating the people’s appearances to be healthy and beautiful,” it says.
Article 11 of the law lists a number of cases in which plastic surgery is permitted. These include: correcting congenital deformities; repairing damage caused by things like soft tissue trauma, burns, tumors, and inflammatory diseases; and for trauma patients in the orthopedic sector.
It also says plastic surgery is permitted “to enhance appearance for aesthetic purposes.” It did not offer any specific examples of what this might include.
Plastic surgery can only be carried out by “specialized plastic surgery hospitals, central-level hospitals, and provincial-level hospitals specializing in plastic surgery” and only by medical staff with “qualifications as plastic surgery specialists,” according to the law.
That rules out the many county-level clinics and polyclinics in North Korea. The law also specifies that even if workers have the necessary qualifications, they cannot conduct procedures unless they are working in specialized institutions.
However, there are restrictions on its use. The law prohibits procedures which “completely change the face to another person’s appearance” and “change fingerprints.” These are likely prohibited for internal security purposes and hints at the importance of biometric security in North Korea.
The law says plastic surgery is banned for sex changes, although it does leave open the possibility it can take place in “special cases,” without defining what those might be.
It also prohibits plastic surgery that does not “conform to a socialist lifestyle,” and helpfully offers two examples: eyebrow or eyelash tattooing.
Domestic Plastic Surgery
While the existence of the law has never been disclosed, there have been occasional mentions of plastic surgery in North Korean state media. This has mostly been in foreign-facing state media outlets that North Koreans do not have access to.
Coverage typically profiles doctors in the field, such as a June 2024 article on the Naenara website about Kwon Yong Sim, PhD, an associate professor at the Pyongyang University of Medical Sciences. The article credited her with developing soft tissue filler and microneedling therapies and acknowledged her work on laser removal of pigments.
Elective surgery is not mentioned in state media, but Seoul-based Daily NK reported in 2007 that the domestic demand for double eye-lid surgery and eyebrow tattoos was increasing. A year earlier, it reported that the state “implicitly allowed” hospitals in Pyongyang, Chongjin and Sinuiju to perform such surgeries.
Daily NK also reported in 2019 that two “amateur facial surgeons” were executed for performing illegal facial surgery after a patient died during a procedure. That would have been shortly after the first amendment to the plastic surgery law was made.
The “Ask a North Korean” column in NK News has also covered the subject three times, disclosing that basic eyelid surgery is very common, but the procedure is usually done in a person’s home rather than a hospital. The report also said eyebrow tattoos are popular.