What it takes to become a flight attendant in South Korea, where it's so competitive that candidates are getting plastic surgery to improve their odds

• South Korea's youth unemployment is nearing "catastrophic" levels, a Korean finance minister said in March.
• To secure a job, many young people in South Korea feel that their application, which must include a photo ID, has to be perfect.
• Being a flight attendants is an especially enviable job in South Korea with plenty of competition. As a result, many aspiring flight attendants are turning to plastic surgery to increase their odds of securing the job.
• Some plastic surgery clinics in South Korea are even making special packages for aspiring flight attendants, encouraging those women to slim their faces, widen their eyes, and upturn their mouths.

It was only 1993 when United flight attendants reported that they were fasting, purging, and taking laxatives to keep their figure — and their jobs. If the crew members weighed more than 11 pounds over the maximum, they would receive 10 days of unpaid temporary leave, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.

Such rules have since been softened or outright banned in much of the world. But flight attendant hopefuls in South Korea still report significant pressure to look a certain way — and it's leading them to take drastic measures.

Leading Korean airlines in South Korea like Asiana Airlines and Korean Air dropped their height stipulation and softened their language requirements for aspiring flight attendants in 2015, local media reported.

But in practice, thanks to a combination of factors including the job application process and Korean standards of beauty, flight attendant hopefuls have reported feeling pressured by an unspoken requirement "to be more beautiful,"The Korea Herald reported.

"The flight attendants are actually the representative of the airline," Sojin Lim, a 25-year-old Seoul resident who worked for a domestic Korean airline, told Business Insider. "How they look will affect the image of it, so they have to always look formal and neat."

SEE ALSO: Flight attendants share 15 of their favorite travel hacks

DON'T MISS: Inside the intensive, two-month training all Delta flight attendants must attend that's harder to get into than Harvard

It's typical for job applications in South Korea to require an ID photo. Because of that, many job applicants in South Korea say they feel the pressure to appear good-looking, whether it's to be a flight attendant, an engineer, or a cashier.

Source:LA Times

In fact, a 2016 survey by Saramin, a Korean online job portal, found that more than 60% of human resources personnel feel an applicant's appearance affects his or her candidacy.

Source:Saramin

The Korean government is seeking to overturn the résumé photo requirement in sweeping regulations that would also ban employers from asking applicants their height, weight, family background, and hometown.

Source:Quartz