Like most places, the public face Korea displays to the world is a fiction. The people most foreigners see are an unrepresentative collection of actors, singers, and TV presenters that are better looking than the average and often airbrushed to flawless perfection. I was struck by this ad outside a department store, which, while perhaps extreme, represents a somewhat feminized ideal of male beauty. I even had to do a double and triple take to ensure it was really a man. This is at odds with the country's clearly defined gender roles (which are quickly evolving) and its regressive views - by Wester standards - of same sex relationships. But beauty is vaunted in all its forms, especially in a commercial context. In this way it fits neatly within a global tendency.