South Korea has the largest portion of its population that got plastic surgeries. In 2011, one in every thousand Korean people got plastic surgeries, and 50,000 people from other countries visited Korea to get plastic surgeries in 2017. Some people might get plastic surgeries for purely medical reasons, but it is a well-known fact that many people spend their money to fix some parts in their face or body because they are unsatisfied with their looks. Also, these statistics have quantified our pitiful reality of Korean lookism. Naver webtoon “Lookism” is one of the webtoons that depicted the extreme example of Korean lookism. 

Friday webtoon, “Lookism” started from Naver Challenge Webtoons and got promoted to the Best Challenges with merely one episode. This webtoon had decent drawings and an interesting topic which attracted many readers at once. Also, many people took attention on this webtoon to learn about the view on lookism from the author, Park Taejoon who was known for having been one of the popular Ulzzangs

“Lookism” starts with the story of ‘Hyung Seok’ who is a complete wimp. Our fat and short protagonist ‘Hyung Seok’ gets bullied in his school. Just because he doesn’t have a desired appearance, he is either contempt or ignored. So, he decides to transfer to a different school and live by himself in an apartment. On the first day of living by himself, he suddenly gets a perfect appearance of muscular body and handsome face, which every man would dream of.   

 

It turned out he can switch between bodies by sleeping. Two bodies take 12-hour sleeping and living shifts by turns. This webtoon is about things that happen to Hyung Seok while living body-switching life and solving the mystery of why this strange phenomenon has happened to him.  

Suspenseful story about the mysterious happenings in the beginning is very captivating. And many readers found subtle criticisms on lookism very interesting: such as school friends now considering Hyung Seok as having a caring and discreet personality for being timid and quiet just because now he became handsome.

In addition, he included strong criticism on bullying in school and depicted blustering behaviors of bullies realistically, so it gained its popularity really quickly.

 

Another fun of this webtoon is characters having different hardships and they overcoming them with each different way. ‘Euntae Lee’ the present leader of Burnknuckle was bullied in his childhood, but he overcame this with his own effort and help from his friend. ‘Lee Jinseong’ once was a boxing prospect then becomes a delinquent due to his childhood traumas. Each different origin stories of characters let readers not only to focus on the protagonist but to learn how each other characters became what they are now. 

At first, this webtoon received many readers’ acclaims for criticizing people judging other based on their looks. For example, the inferior version of Hyung Seok keeps getting treated unfairly in different ways, and ‘Deok Hwa’ doesn’t get the recognition he deserves for being talented at rapping because of his fat and small appearance.

 

As the webtoon gets longer, the webtoon's good intention in the beginning faded away. Good looking people suddenly becomes ugly when they do bad things, High school students blatantly smoke cigarette and have tattoos, and the story is too focused on high school gangs fighting. Most importantly, the main story isn’t progressing; there are too many side episodes about contemporary social topics such as homeless people and internet streamers. However, hate comments and criticisms are probably inevitable for such popular webtoon  

 

However, there’s good news people for people who have stopped reading in the middle. The story came back to its original track of finding the secrets of the mysterious protagonist. The superior Hyung Seok lost his consciousness because of Jiho, so the inferior Hyung Seok went out to find his body’s secrets.

 

‘Sujeong’ another student in Hyung Seok’s class turned out she also has two bodies. So, it is getting more interesting as more facts about how these weird things can happen and which groups are involved and controlling what’s happening from behind are being uncovered.

The current episodes are about the inferior Hyung Seok losing his consciousness while resisting against the bully that causes the superior Hyung Seok to wake up, and hidden clouts slowly revealing their identities. 

 

In addition, the hidden clout that made double bodies of Hyung Seok and Sujeong promised to tell the secret to anyone who can unify the top 4 crews in Korea.

Will Hyung Seok be able to unify the top 4 crews? What is the secret behind Hyung Seok getting two bodies?

Whether Hyung seok will go back to his original body or stay in the superior version is another interesting issue.