46% of female college students in South Korea have had plastic surgery.
In South Korea, cosmetic surgery isn’t just an industry; it’s practically an institution. The streets of Seoul shimmer with glowing billboards for “eye smiles” and “V-line” jawlines, their pastel promises backed by a fiercely competitive network of clinics. The statistic that nearly half of all female college students in South Korea have had a cosmetic procedure may sound like an outlier, but here, it’s the product of an intricate web of cultural, economic, and technological forces.
These beauty ideals are not timeless, nor are they uniquely Korean. The modern boom in cosmetic surgery can be traced to the nation’s postwar economic ascent and its embrace of Western influences. The rise of K-pop idols—faces sculpted to perfection—transformed the look of aspiration, both at home and abroad. South Korea’s beauty standards, now a heady mix of tradition and global trends, have become export products themselves.
If the old standards once trickled down from cinema screens and magazine covers, today they cascade through Instagram, TikTok, and the omnipresent Korean messaging app KakaoTalk. The digital mirror is relentless. Face filters and editing apps turn the dream of perfection into a tap-and-swipe routine, while influencers and celebrities—often open about their own procedures—blur the line between natural and enhanced. The result is a digital arms race where beauty trends travel at light speed and ordinary users feel the pull to keep up.
Behind this social current is a thriving economy. South Korea’s cosmetic surgery market isn’t just for locals; it draws “medical tourists” from around the world, eager for the skill and technology that clinics here have perfected. Clinics market aggressively, especially toward students: discounts timed to university entrance exams, package deals for friends, and financing plans that promise transformation on a payment schedule. The business isn’t just about beauty—it’s about belonging, and every billboard is a nudge.
But the costs of this competitive beauty culture aren’t distributed equally. Women face far greater pressure to conform, but the phenomenon is spreading to men as well. Meanwhile, surgery can be both a marker of privilege and a tool for upward mobility. For some, the choice to undergo a procedure is about survival in an unforgiving job market or gaining a foothold in the dating scene. For others, it’s simply out of reach—another rung on the ladder of inequality.
With all this pressure comes a psychological price. Mental health professionals in South Korea have noted rising rates of anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia among young people. In a society where appearance can dictate opportunity, the distinction between self-expression and self-surveillance is thin. The question of empowerment—are these choices truly autonomous?—hovers over every consultation and selfie.
Yet South Korea is not alone. The beauty industrial complex stretches from Rio to Los Angeles, from Tehran to Tokyo, each culture negotiating its own version of “the look.” But in few places has the pursuit of perfection become as systematized and institutionalized as in Seoul. Here, beauty is both a communal project and an economic engine.
Not everyone is on board with this relentless push toward uniformity. Counter-movements like #EscapeTheCorset have emerged, encouraging women to reject mainstream beauty norms, ditch heavy makeup, and refuse surgery. Feminist activists, artists, and students question the costs of a culture so obsessed with the surface. These voices remain in the minority but offer a pointed critique of the status quo: the boldest act, in a world of transformation, might be to refuse to change at all.
Policy, meanwhile, is struggling to keep pace. Some universities offer counseling, but marketing to students remains largely unchecked. Informed consent laws exist but are rarely a meaningful brake on the industry’s momentum. The result is a system where change is available to those who can afford it, and the pressure to conform trickles down from billboards to bathrooms to every filtered image on a smartphone.
In the end, South Korea’s beauty culture is a reflection—sometimes flattering, sometimes warped—of a society negotiating the costs and benefits of transformation. In a landscape where nearly half of female college students have had cosmetic surgery, the question isn’t just why so many choose to go under the knife, but whether true freedom can exist when beauty is both a personal project and a social mandate.
The United States bombed Laos with the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years. That adds up to 270 million bombs total, or about 100 bombs per Laotian at the time.
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States carried out what is now known as the “Secret War” in Laos, a campaign so vast and relentless that the statistics barely seem real. Over nine years, American warplanes dropped more than two million tons of ordnance—equivalent to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, twenty-four hours a day, for nearly a decade. The tally is staggering: about 270 million cluster bombs fell on Laos, or roughly 100 bombs for every Laotian living in the country at the time.
This was not a war that played out on television screens or dominated the headlines in the United States. Instead, it was a shadow conflict, conducted as part of America’s effort to disrupt North Vietnamese supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and to shore up the Royal Lao Government against communist forces. The campaign was largely kept from the American public, with Congress and the media only learning the full extent years later.
But for the people of Laos, the bombing was inescapable and unrelenting. Entire villages were wiped from the map. Fields that once yielded rice and vegetables became uninhabitable craterscapes. During the height of the campaign, families learned to live underground in makeshift caves, surfacing only at night to tend to what crops remained. Children grew up with the thunder of explosions as their lullaby.
And the devastation did not end when the last bombs fell. An estimated 80 million cluster bomblets—roughly 30% of those dropped—failed to explode on impact. These unexploded ordnances (UXOs) are a deadly inheritance, turning everyday activities like farming, building, or even playing into acts of mortal risk. Decades later, these hidden killers continue to maim and kill Laotians every year, stalling economic development and keeping whole communities locked in fear.
International efforts to clear UXOs in Laos have made progress, but the work is painstaking and expensive. Teams must move inch by inch, carefully unearthing devices that can detonate with the slightest touch. The legacy of the bombing campaign also lingers in other, quieter ways: stunted opportunities for rural families, lost arable land, and a national psyche shaped by trauma.
What’s perhaps most striking is how invisible this history remains outside of Laos. American students might learn about the Vietnam War, but rarely is Laos mentioned—let alone the scale of the bombing campaign. The world’s most heavily bombed country per capita exists as a footnote, a shadow, a story too big and too tragic to easily fit in the margins of textbooks.
And yet, the people of Laos persist. In villages marked by warning signs and cleared fields, communities strive to reclaim their land and their futures. For them, the war is not a distant memory but an ever-present reality—a daily negotiation with history, and a lesson in both the devastation of modern warfare and the resilience of the human spirit.
Disney once tried to open a park that would allow guests to “feel what it was like to be a slave.”
In the early 1990s, the Walt Disney Company was riding high on a wave of ambitious expansion. Fresh off the successes of its animated film renaissance and with parks thriving in the United States and Japan, Disney looked to plant its flag near the nation’s capital. The plan: a new kind of theme park called Disney’s America, designed not around fairy tales or cartoon characters, but around the complex, turbulent story of the United States itself.
Disney’s vision was as grand as it was controversial. Announced in 1993, the proposed park in Haymarket, Virginia, would offer guests immersive, historical experiences spanning everything from Native American villages and Ellis Island immigrant journeys to the industrial revolution and Civil War battlefields. The concept, according to Disney, was to make history come alive—sometimes in ways that would challenge, unsettle, and even educate. It was an idea that would quickly run into a wall of public resistance.
The project’s most explosive controversy centered on the proposed treatment of slavery and race in American history. Disney executives suggested that visitors might “feel what it was like to be a slave or what it was like to escape through the Underground Railroad.” While meant to underscore a commitment to realism and emotional engagement, the idea triggered an immediate backlash. Historians, civil rights leaders, and members of the public condemned the notion of translating one of the darkest chapters in American history into a theme park attraction, fearing it could trivialize or commodify unimaginable suffering.
The outrage was not limited to the depiction of slavery. Many Virginians, particularly those living near the proposed site, objected to the park’s proximity to historic Civil War battlefields, warning that a Disney-fied version of American history would overshadow or distort the gravity of those places. Environmental concerns added fuel to the fire, as did Disney’s growing reputation as a corporate juggernaut insensitive to local traditions and the nuance of real history.
The backlash wasn’t just moral or academic. Letters poured in. Protests were organized. Editorials ran in The Washington Post and The New York Times. A coalition of historians—among them renowned scholar James McPherson—publicly urged Disney to reconsider, arguing that “history is not a theme park ride.” The National Trust for Historic Preservation and other cultural organizations warned that Disney’s America risked erasing or overshadowing the authentic, complicated legacy of the Civil War and slavery with commercial spectacle.
Meanwhile, Disney faced growing financial pressures, including the costly underperformance of its Euro Disney park (now Disneyland Paris), which made further investment risky. The negative publicity and mounting local opposition became too much to ignore. In September 1994, less than a year after its grand announcement, Disney canceled the project.
The world’s longest-reigning current monarch is also an absolute monarch. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has been ruling Brunei for 57 years. He’s also the country’s Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Minister of Economy, Minister of Home Affairs, and Minister of Foreign Affairs
It’s a curious quirk of our era that while the rest of the world debates the nuances of democracy and the fragile magic of constitutional monarchy, one man in a pocket of Southeast Asia quietly holds the sort of power that would make even the most bombastic CEO or world leader blush. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei isn’t just a king—he’s the king, the prime minister, the minister of defense, the minister of the economy, the minister of foreign affairs, and, just for good measure, the minister of home affairs. There is a cabinet in Brunei, and it’s largely him, speaking to himself.
This is not an exaggeration, but the day-to-day reality of life in Brunei, a lush, oil-rich sultanate smaller than Connecticut and richer (per capita) than just about anywhere you’ve heard of. Hassanal Bolkiah has been on the throne for more than 57 years, a reign so enduring that he’s outlasted Beatles breakups, the entire lifespan of disco, and the rise and fall of Twitter as a bird-themed brand. At 78, he is not just the world’s longest-reigning current monarch; he is its most absolute, a living, breathing reminder of an age when rulers didn’t ask for permission—they simply ruled.
His story starts predictably enough: born into royalty, educated in the quiet privilege of British military academies, and crowned in 1967. But it’s what he does with power that reads like an over-the-top screenplay for a modern-day sultan. Brunei’s riches flow from the earth in rivers of oil and gas, and the Sultan presides over them with a velvet glove and a golden touch. His palace, the Istana Nurul Iman, sprawls over 2,000,000 square feet and features 1,788 rooms—a residence so opulent that it makes Versailles look like a modest weekend getaway. There are stories of gold-plated bathrooms, a garage of 7,000 luxury cars, and annual birthday parties that would make Gatsby rethink his guest list.
But the Sultan is not content to be merely decorative. In Brunei, there’s no political post so minor or so major that it isn’t his to fill. This kind of concentrated power is often described with adjectives like “absolute” or “unparalleled,” but it can feel more like performance art—a one-man cabinet meeting where every motion carries.
Yet, for all the autocratic flourish, Brunei is a place of quiet order and government-subsidized comfort. Its citizens pay no income tax. Healthcare and education are free. Poverty is nearly nonexistent. It’s a vision of the benevolent monarch, presiding over a kingdom where the spoils of oil keep the engine humming and dissent largely at bay.
But to equate stability with utopia would be to ignore the tensions woven into the Sultan’s rule. In 2014, Brunei implemented a strict form of Sharia law, introducing punishments that ignited international outrage and celebrity boycotts of Brunei-owned hotels from Los Angeles to London. The Sultan, accustomed to global attention but not necessarily to global criticism, responded by reaffirming his commitment to traditional Islamic values—insulating his tiny nation further from the encroaching influences of the West.
Still, there is a palpable unreality to the whole spectacle, a sense of stepping into an alternate timeline where absolute monarchy didn’t quietly recede, but doubled down. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah presides over a country where the old world hasn’t just survived, but thrived, fortified by petro-dollars and a ruling family with an iron grip on history. Where the rest of us binge-watch “The Crown” for a taste of royalty, Bruneians wake up each day to the real thing, with the same man holding every lever of power for nearly six decades—and counting.
Eduard Bloch, Hitler’s family physician that was Jewish. He billed the family at a reduced cost and sometimes refused to bill them when Hitler’s mother was dying of breast cancer. Years later, Hitler gave Bloch special protection and allowed him to emigrate to the United States
History is full of strange twists, but few are as surprising—or as unsettling—as the story of Dr. Eduard Bloch. Bloch was a Jewish doctor living in Linz, Austria, in the early 1900s. He was well known for treating working-class families and never letting money get in the way of caring for his patients. Among those he helped was the family of a young Adolf Hitler.
In 1907, Hitler’s mother, Klara, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Dr. Bloch did everything he could to help, even though the treatments back then were harsh and not very effective. What made Dr. Bloch stand out was his kindness: he charged the Hitlers much less than he could have—and sometimes refused to take money at all, knowing the family was struggling. When Klara passed away, 18-year-old Adolf was devastated. Dr. Bloch later said that he’d never seen anyone grieve for their mother the way Hitler did.
You might think that would be the end of the story. But years later, after Hitler had become the leader of Nazi Germany—a regime responsible for some of the worst crimes against Jews in history—Dr. Bloch’s name would come up again in a very unexpected way. When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, things became dangerous for every Jewish person there, including Dr. Bloch. Remembering how he had cared for his mother, Hitler personally made sure that Dr. Bloch and his family were protected. Unlike most Austrian Jews, they were allowed to keep their belongings, send mail, and, most importantly, leave the country safely.
Dr. Bloch and his wife moved to the United States, settling in New York. He spent the last years of his life there, far from the horrors unfolding in Europe. Dr. Bloch never understood how the boy he once knew—the quiet, grief-stricken teenager—became the dictator responsible for so much suffering. In interviews, he remembered Hitler as “well-mannered and neatly dressed,” a dreamer with a sensitive side. The contrast between the boy and the man he became was almost impossible for Bloch to make sense of.
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