Every morning, before I even get out of bed, I open Instagram and am instantly hit by an endless barrage of "body profile" photos and aesthetic diet vlogs. Walking through the streets of Seoul, subway stations are plastered with dramatic "before" and "after" plastic surgery and diet advertisements. Increasingly, I see my own friends — teenagers who are perfectly healthy — becoming obsessed with quick-fix weight loss, desperately trying to mimic the radical, rapid transformations of K-pop idols and influencers. In Korea, health has undergone a strange mutation. It is no longer a biological indicator of well-being and sustainability, but rather an immediate obligation to manufacture one’s body to fit a narrow social standard. Sixty percent of diet-pill users in Korea are not medically obese. Yet, driven by social pressure, many resort to heavy pharmaceuticals, only to suffer from severe anxiety, insomnia and behavioral changes. According to data submitted to the National Assembly, doctors in Korea prescribed over 1 billion pills of these narcotic appetite suppressants between 2021 a