There’s no denying the fact that IU (Lee Ji Eun) is “THE” hottest Korean star in the Korean peninsula these days. If Kim Yu Na conquered South Korea’s media all throughout last year with her fantastic performances in the figure skating world – which in turn made her the ‘Queen of Corporate Endorsements’ in 2010, IU had already duplicated this feat plus more based on her multiple media exposures and popular brand name endorsements (such as the Samsung Galaxy SII, HomePlus Shopping Mall etc.).
What’s so great about IU’s skyrocketing popularity rise in Korea this season was the fact that she achieved this mega stardom without ‘achieving too much’ like the other popular Korean stars of today – winning the gold medal at the Winter Olympics, or topping the US Billboard charts. She just did what she normally does with her singing career – launch an album, promote it in the media, stay relevant in between, rinse and repeat. According to one K-pop critic, IU just being IU is her winning formula to success. She definitely conquered the hearts of the Korean masses with her simplicity and talent in a country obsessed with the enhancement or should we say ‘alteration of an image’ to achieve beauty – or in a more popular term ‘plastic surgery’.
Just like Kim Yu Na before her, IU has also been marred by this ‘plastic surgery’ issue by ‘surprise-surprise’ the infamous ‘Korean netizens’. IU had already denied getting ‘plastic surgery’ in the past but she did confessed last month in an SBS TV program that she consulted a plastic surgeon before her debut in the Kpop world regarding her ‘small and flat nose’ and inquired on ways on how to ‘fix it’, but the surgeon told her that because of her ‘thin skin’, he could only raise her nose by 1mm, which makes the plastic surgery operation ‘insignificant’.
Here is a fan made video showcasing a collection of IU photographs taken before her pre-showbiz debut years. This may once and for all prove to all Korean idol-bashing netizens and critics alike that IU is indeed one of Korea’s top ‘Natural Beauty’ stars.
