Sungyesa reviews: why you should not trust them

Sungyesa is a plastic surgery community in Korea. Its name is short for a Korean phrase meaning "people getting prettier through plastic surgery". It describes itself as a place with no ads and a place that blocks brokers.

According to WikiDoc's research on November 1, 2026, this is what really happens.

1. There are promotional accounts that pretend to be patients. For example, the nickname "Mamel**" commented on 17 different posts in 43 minutes. Along the way, it slipped in The Door Plastic Surgery and Top Tier Plastic Surgery three times. Names like DA Plastic Surgery, VVLY Plastic Surgery and CODE Plastic Surgery come up the same way.
2. Its broker blocking is not what it claims. Sungyesa promotes "patented broker blocking". But after watching it for a long time, WikiDoc does not see that kind of management taking place. Even after some accounts got a "Suspended" mark, their comments were still up. On the other hand, when a member names a broker in public, Sungyesa deletes that post. The channels through which a clinic can assert its rights are also limited.
3. From the start, it called itself "non-profit" while selling clinic ads. In 2005, the phone number for ad inquiries was a Philippine number. Donations went into the operator's personal bank account.
4. It still makes money from ads and deals today. But the site does not show a company name.

The cases WikiDoc has confirmed on Sungyesa, by date. Each has its own blog post with the screens.

• 2026-08-22 DA Plastic Surgery on three contouring posts in four minutes: Sungyesa's "Salppae**"
• 2026-10-12 11 p.m., four eye surgery posts in seven minutes: "Chai and Hani"
• 2026-10-15 "Who is good with rib cartilage?" Three recommendations on one question, all from promotional accounts
• 2026-10-16 Six posts in nine minutes, and three of them say "I had surgery at VVLY"
• 2026-10-17 "Still my top pick", then 25 minutes later "I had it done there": Sungyesa's "Jamsil**"
• 2026-10-18 4 posts in 5 minutes, 7 posts in 8 minutes: Sungyesa's "Bita**" and "Haejyo**"
• 2026-10-25 All five times the same four clinics, only the order changed
• 2026-10-26 17 posts in 43 minutes, with The Door and Top Tier three times
• 2026-10-30 Sungyesa's "patented broker blocking" is not what it claims

Real patients also write "I had it done here". You cannot tell from one comment. WikiDoc lined up each account's comments in time order. Several accounts showed patterns that are hard to find in real patients.

• They go around several different posts within a few minutes.
• They put in the same clinic names even when the topic changes.
• What they say does not add up.
• They show up one after another on the same question post.
• They cluster in weekday working hours.

Here are a few examples.

17 posts in 43 minutes

For example, the nickname "Mamel**" moved to a different post every 1 to 3 minutes and left a comment each time. The topic did not matter: double eyelid surgery, arm liposuction, nose revision surgery, reversing an inner corner opening, HIFU and RF lifting. Along the way, three times, it slipped in The Door Plastic Surgery and Top Tier Plastic Surgery (both written in Korean initials), saying "I'm looking at them too".

More: 17 posts in 43 minutes, with The Door and Top Tier three times

Five times, always the same four clinics

The nickname "ye**" commented on five posts where people were talking about facial contouring. All five times, it wrote the same four clinics, 1percent Plastic Surgery, Borndi Plastic Surgery, Ipche Plastic Surgery and No Jonghun Plastic Surgery (all in Korean initials), and only changed the order. Three of those comments were written within 2 minutes.

More: All five times the same four clinics, only the order changed

Done with surgery, yet still choosing a clinic

On October 14, in 10 minutes, the nickname "Jamsil**" left "I had it done at" a clinic written in two Korean initials on three nose surgery posts. It also wrote "I'm really happy with it, I never want to go back to my old nose". In Sungyesa posts those initials come up with nose surgery, and the clinic whose name matches is CODE Plastic Surgery.

The next day at 4:34 p.m., this account wrote "I went to a consultation at Louvre Plastic Surgery (in initials) and so far it's my top pick". 25 minutes later, on another post, it wrote again "I had it done at" the same initials, "and the scar is barely visible". Within 25 minutes, it went from someone still choosing a clinic to someone who had already had the surgery. Over two days, this account commented on 16 posts.

More: "Still my top pick", then 25 minutes later "I had it done there": Sungyesa's "Jamsil**"

The nickname "Kkachil**" commented on 6 posts in 9 minutes. On three of them, it wrote that it had surgery at VVLY Plastic Surgery (in initials).

More: Six posts in nine minutes, and three of them say "I had surgery at VVLY"

Three "recommendations" on one question, all from promotional accounts

Three people answered the question "Does anyone know a clinic that is good with your own rib cartilage?". To the person who asked, it looks like three patients each recommended a clinic. But all three are accounts we saw above. "Bita**", "Jamsil**" and "Kkachil**" also wrote the same clinics again and again within a few minutes on other posts. On this question too, they wrote Kai and Louvre, CODE, and Finish and VVLY Plastic Surgery. What the person who asked got was not experiences but answers from three promotional accounts.

More: "Who is good with rib cartilage?" Three recommendations on one question, all from promotional accounts

Short bursts

"Bita**" put Kai Plastic Surgery into 4 posts in 5 minutes and ended with "go to a consultation together". The day before, for 5 minutes, it wrote Louvre, KOWON, Hit and Kai Plastic Surgery. The nickname "Haejyo**" went through liposuction posts that were a few days old, one after another, and commented on 7 of them in 8 minutes. On 4 of them it wrote LE ROSE Clinic and Bbae Clinic (in initials). Two clinics appearing together does not mean the account belongs to both. The possible cases are listed below under "What are these comments?".

More: 4 posts in 5 minutes, 7 posts in 8 minutes: Sungyesa's "Bita**" and "Haejyo**"

Big, well-known clinics too

The nickname "Salppae**" went through three posts about facial contouring, one to two minutes apart, and wrote "I decided to have it done at" the clinic, "they read my face well" and "I liked this place best". The clinic was written in Korean initials. In the same posts, another member spelled it out as DA. It is DA Plastic Surgery.

More: DA Plastic Surgery on three contouring posts in four minutes: Sungyesa's "Salppae**"

The nickname "iq**" wrote "I'm looking at Chai and Hani" in almost the same words on four different eye surgery posts in seven minutes, starting at 11:20 at night. These are Chai Plastic Surgery and Hani Plastic Surgery.

More: 11 p.m., four eye surgery posts in seven minutes: "Chai and Hani"

In numbers

• From April to October 2026, WikiDoc reviewed tens of thousands of Sungyesa comments. Sungyesa shows many of them only to members.
• Hundreds of comments named a clinic and recommended it, with words like "I had it done", "I went there", "recommend" or "top pick".
• 61% of those hundreds were written on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. For other comments, the figure was 50%. Only the comments that recommend clinic names cluster more in working hours.
• 14 accounts pushed the same clinic on 3 or more different posts.

Posts that mention a clinic name showed the same thing. Praise posts clustered in working hours, and complaint posts were written in the evening and on weekends.

People who had surgery write after work. Only praise clusters in working hours. WikiDoc thinks that many of these praise posts are written at work by people who work for clinics.

What are these comments?

A person who takes patients to a clinic and gets paid for it is called a broker. Some clinics also have their staff or a marketing agency write posts while pretending to be patients. WikiDoc sees the behavior above as the work of brokers or clinic promotional accounts. Only Sungyesa knows who the accounts above are. Whether the clinics named in the comments asked for these comments is not something these data show.

A recommended clinic is not necessarily the owner of the account. There are a few possible cases. First, it may be a promotion agency that handles several clinics at once. Second, it may be one clinic's account that also writes other clinics, because naming only one would look like promotion. This is a trick where a lower-ranked clinic mixes in the names of clinics that advertise a lot or rank high in search.

Korea's Medical Service Act bans referring patients in return for payment (Article 27) and using treatment experiences in ads (Article 56).

At the very top of its clinic reputation board, Sungyesa writes that "a broker blocking system registered as a patent with the Korean Intellectual Property Office is running". On its home page, it writes "Korea's first patented broker blocking system, running FULL 24 hours".

It is true that the operator filed patents. But having a patent and actually doing that management are different things. After watching it for a long time, WikiDoc does not see the broker blocking that Sungyesa promotes taking place. Among the accounts above, "Bita**" and "iq**" show a "Suspended" mark on the screen. Even so, the comments these accounts wrote are still up. Sungyesa even puts a "Report suspected broker" button on every comment. They are still there.

An account that slips clinic names into 17 posts in 43 minutes is easy for the operator to find just by looking at comment records. WikiDoc found it only from comments seen from the outside. Sungyesa's rules, too, differ from what it claims.

• If you name a broker in public, your post is deleted. Posts that name a certain post or person as a broker are deleted, and the writer gets penalty points. Members cannot tell each other "this account looks suspicious".
• The fastest way to level up is clinic ratings. One clinic rating comment earns 250 points. Level 3 takes 800 points.
• It says itself that 30% are mistakes. "We estimate that 30% of all penalties are normal members."
• The channels through which a clinic can assert its rights are limited.

Sungyesa makes money from clinic ads and clinic treatment deals (see "Today it makes money from ads and deals" below). The more it blocks comments that push clinic names, the more Sungyesa loses.

More: Sungyesa's "patented broker blocking" is not what it claims

At the very bottom of the Sungyesa site, there is only a copyright notice and a Gmail address. There is no company name, address or phone number. In the privacy policy, the field for the person in charge also shows only one name and a Gmail address.

The App Store is different. The provider of the Sungyesa app is "Alphaplus Co., Ltd.". The company that filed the patents Sungyesa promotes has the same name.

Sungyesa collects members' real names, dates of birth and mobile phone numbers through an identity verification company. It checks who its members are, but it does not write its own company name on the site. The terms of use say that disputes go to "the court with jurisdiction over Sungyesa's location". That location is written nowhere.

Old Sungyesa screens are saved in the Wayback Machine (an internet archive of past web pages).

January 2005. A notice titled "Recruiting sponsor banner advertisers". It said Sungyesa was "a non-profit, purely amateur club" and had been run with the operator's own money. So it would accept banners from plastic surgery clinics, dental clinics and dermatology clinics. The phone number for inquiries was a Philippine number. The very bottom of the screen also showed "Ad sponsorship inquiries" with the Philippine number.

March 2005. A notice titled "Emergency!! Please help Sungyesa". It asked members for donations and gave a bank account in the operator's personal name. It also said "Sponsoring members get priority for level-ups" and "We hope no one misunderstands this as being commercial". By this time, the phone number at the bottom of the screen had changed to a Chinese number.

2014. The bottom of the screen said "Free non-profit site". At the same time, a notice titled "How to apply for sponsored ad banners" sold clinic banner spaces on each board and consultation boards "for a specific plastic surgery clinic only". It also has the sentence "The Sungyesa site is not subject to medical advertising review".

2015. The "About the company" page said "Amid a flood of ads, many cases of failed plastic surgery came to accumulate on Sungyesa". It is an "About the company" page, but there is no company name.

At the very top of the Sungyesa screen, it says "The trusted plastic surgery app that grew by word of mouth alone, without ads". This is what the screen looked like in October 2026.

• Clinic treatment deals: "Clinic Event Tickets" lists hundreds of discount deals for clinic treatments, with prices.
• Clinic ads on every post: under posts, notices included, there is an "Ad" space.
• Boards named after clinics: the clinic's account answers directly. One of these boards alone had more than 5,000 posts.
• One-Stop Quotes: when a user asks for a quote, clinic directors reply.
• "How you found us" event: when a clinic asks "How did you hear about us?", you can write "Sungyesa" and get up to 5,000 points. This setup lets Sungyesa show clinics that "we sent you patients".

Taking ads is not wrong in itself. The problem is that Sungyesa does it while saying "there are no ads" and "we are neutral". Sungyesa bans ads from other companies. Only Sungyesa can advertise.

Sungyesa made its name with posts that tear clinics down. So a clinic with many bad posts is not always a bad clinic.

• They may be attacks by brokers or promotional accounts. WikiDoc saw firsthand on Sungyesa the activity of accounts that pretend to be patients and push clinics. The same method can be used to write posts that tear other clinics down.
• Clinics that do difficult surgery are at a disadvantage. Double jaw surgery, facial contouring and revision surgery bring complaints more easily to begin with.
• Big clinics are at a disadvantage. A clinic with ten doctors does far more surgeries than a clinic with one. Even if problems happen at the same rate, it gets ten times as many bad posts.
• It builds a score from bad ratings only. The clinic reputation page says its "trust score" is calculated by "collecting only the ratings of members who rated below average".
• Clinics find it hard to respond. A clinic that often asks for takedowns gets blocked from search, and members see a pop-up about it.

On the other hand, a clinic with no bad posts and only praise may be one that the promotional accounts above take care of.

• Sungyesa is a commercial site that does not show its operator's name on the site. Do not see it as "a fair community without ads".
• Do not take clinic recommendations in comments at face value. Click the account and see whether it pushes the same clinic on other posts too.
• Comments like "I had it done here and I'm happy", "go to a consultation together", or a list of four or five clinics may be promotion.
• Skip posts with lots of "send me a private message" and "I sent you a message".
• Do not rule out a clinic by the number of bad posts alone. Also look at what surgeries it does and how many.
• Look at the same clinic's reviews on Gangnam Unni, Babitalk, Naver and Google Maps too.