So Yeon Leem

So Yeon Leem is a professor at Sookmyung Women’s University, South Korea, and an expert in Women in STEM and cosmetic surgery practices in the country.

I have published academic articles written in both Korean and English, mostly concerning women in STEM and women’s cosmetic surgery practices in Korea. There’re not many researchers who have an expert on these kinds of topics in Korea and I am one of the leading ones. I also teach Science, Technology and Gender at Seoul National University.

Areas of expertise: Women in STEM, women’s Health (cosmetic surgery), young korean women

Selected media coverage

Double standards - 99% Invisible, August 28, 2018
South Korea's Plastic Surgery Boom: A Quest To Be 'Above Normal' - The Huffington Post, September 18, 2019

Selected publications

Doing Science, Technology, and Women Studies : “With the Body” in-between New Material Feminism and STS (in Korean, 2019) Download
Making faces racial: how plastic surgery enacts race in the US, Korea and Brazil, July 2020. Ethnic and Racial Studies. DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2020.1791353. Alexander Edmonds and So Yeon Leem.
Gangnam-Style Plastic Surgery: The Science of Westernized Beauty in South Korea, June 2017. Medical Anthropology 36(1). DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2017.1345904. So Yeon Leem.
Frankenstein ŭi ilsang: Saengmyoung gonghak sidae ŭi geongang gwa ŭiryo 프랑켄슈타인의 일상- 생명공학시대의 건강과 의료 [ Frankensteinian Everyday: Feminist Engagement with Health and Medicine in the Age of Biotechnology ], December 2016. East Asian Science Technology and Society an International Journal 10(4):485-487. DOI: 10.1215/18752160-3503362. So Yeon Leem.
The Dubious Enhancement: Making South Korea a Plastic Surgery Nation, March 2016. East Asian Science Technology and Society an International Journal 10(1):51-71. DOI: 10.1215/18752160-3325203. So Yeon Leem