Justice Party lawmaker Ryu Ho-jeong is on a crusade to overturn Korea's decades-old tattoo ban. In the course of her campaign she has come across many curiosities, not least the discovery that her arch-conservative elderly colleague Hong Joon-pyo has had his eyebrows tattooed.
More surprising still is that the person most likely to have a tattoo is your auntie. A survey of 5,030 people by pollster Tillion Pro showed Koreans in their 60s are the biggest customers of tattoo services.
One 61-year-old housewife had her eyebrows and eyelids tattooed. "I realized how old I looked after turning 60," Lee said. "I'm happy to hear my friends tell me my eyebrows and eyelids look fuller after I got them tattooed and I can save time putting on makeup too."
To be fair, that is not quite the same as having a mermaid inked on your arm or a Celtic pattern in the small of your back. Among respondents, those in their 20s mostly had tattoos on their arms and legs, while over half of those in their 50s and 60s had their eyebrows and eyelids tattooed for cosmetic reasons.
Lee admits she does not think of herself as tattooed in the same way a sailor or hipster might. "I would have thought I got some sort of cosmetic procedure, and I didn't know it was illegal," she said.
Still, long gone are the days when tattoos were synonymous with heavyset gangsters, which is what gave them a bad name in the first place.
So why are tattoos technically still illegal? The reason is a Supreme Court ruling from 30 years ago, when the elderly men on the bench tried to stem the onset of anarchy by deciding that tattooists who are not certified medical experts could spread infectious diseases and subject to criminal prosecution.
"The closed mindset of Supreme Court justices 30 years ago is too out of date to serve as a standard for the Korea in 2021," Ryu told reporters last week.
But not everyone who has a tattoo supports legalizing them. When asked how they feel about legalizing tattoos, 31 percent were against while 49 percent gave only conditional approval, saying it is okay to have cosmetic tattoos on the face. Only 20 percent said tattoos are fine anywhere on the body.
By age group, people in their 60s were most likely to oppose legalizing tattoos with 35.8 percent, while only 12.3 percent supported full-body tattoos. Among people in their 20s, which had the smallest proportion of people with tattoos, 32.4 percent said people should be allowed to get tattoos wherever they want. And even among people in their 20s and 30s, about one-third opposed legalizing tattoos by non-medical experts for health reasons.
Among people in their 50s and 60s, many also opposed tattoos because they are menacing.
Song Gang-seop, head of the Korea Tattoo Association, said, "At present, 6 million cosmetic tattoos and 500,000 body tattoos are being done annually. It's perfectly normal and we shouldn’t have to hide from the law. You can't stop it anyway."
