Review of Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Dong Hoon Lee For Limb Lengthening Surgery

Before we start on this post, I did want to completely admit a few things for the readers of the website.

1. I am currently living in the country of South Korea. The exact location where I am actually living at is about 5 minute walk from the Gangnam Station in the Gangnam area of Seoul.
2. One of the reasons I came to Korea besides for a business opportunity was to take a look at the medical tourism opportunities. I went in for a consultation to the famous BK Hospital located in the Nonhyeon-Dong area about over a year ago to get a possible nose reduction and eyelift (I have rather baggy eyes)
3. In the last 3 months I have taken my Korean girlfriend to the Severance Hospital (associated with Yonsei University) in Gangnam about 10 times or so because of certain medical issues she has had to deal with. We were referred to the Severance Hospital by a neurologist.

What I am trying to state right away is that because of my very unique situation, due to the exact location of where I have lived for almost a year and a half now, from the very beginning of the website, I have had a much more lenient approach and view on cosmetic surgery than most of my friends back in the US or Canada. Remember also that I am an American and a guy. What this means that my viewpoint on the use of cosmetic surgery to “improve” or “remodel” one’s physical appearance is positive.

I have known for a very long time that the Gangnam area, specifically the Apgujeong Dong area is filled with Plastic Surgery clinics by the hundreds. Every single day I am reminded over and over again of people who have gone under the knife, and let surgeons break their bones to make themselves more beautiful. They have chosen to endure maybe a 1 month of excruciating pain for a possible 30 years of benefits for improving their physical appearance ever so slightly. The fact that every single time I turn on the TV or go to the movies and the ads and previews are filled with commercials for cosmetic surgery clinics show just how pervasive it is in this part of the world.

The video below from Simon and Martina of the Eat Your Kimchi blog might be worth checking out to understand the South Korean psyche and thinking process on why they feel that changing one’s appearance through surgery is okay.

 

At this point, due to what I have seen on a daily basis, and based on my own life story, I completely and fully accept the idea of using cosmetic surgery to make a person more beautiful, whether it is to make them taller by breaking their leg bones in half, or to cut the jaw bones to give the face a more V-like shape.

So let’s take a look at what is probably the only well known South Korean physician or surgeon which advertises this controversial cosmetic surgery procedure to the international community.

His name is Dr. Dong Hoon Lee (or Dr. Donghoon Lee)

I first became away of Dr. Dong Hoon Lee from scouring through the old journals written by people on the Make Me Taller discussion forum which were used to document/log their personal journey. When it came to doctors in this country of 50 millions, he was the only one that was really blatantly promoting, marketing, and advertising his services.

Dr. Lee would again be mentioned in the newer Limb Lengthening Forum in a thread entitled “Dr Donghoon Lee (Gyeonggi-do, South Korea) Bundang CHA Hospital”. The pricing listed on the forum thread is…

LON (Lengthening Over Nail) = $40,000
LATN (Lengthening And Then Nailing) = $46,000
PRECICE (Femur) (Intramedullary Lengthening Devices) = $64,000
PRECICE (Tibia) = $65,000
Nail Removal = $5,000

This is his official website Here. It seems that in a post made just a few days ago, on Jan 8th, 2014 Dr. Lee’s Assistant sent an email to one of the board members on the new discussion forum noting to them that Dr. Lee has relocated to become part of the medical staff at Yonsei Severance Hospital. Refer to the thread “Dr. Donghoon Lee Moving to Severance Hospital in Seoul, Korea“

Quoted from him on the forum…

“As I begin my new post as a Limb Lengthening Professor at Severance, I will do my best to make Severance one of the leading hospitals for Limb Lengthening and Deformity correction in the world.
…Above all else, I will be the only one in charge of limb lengthening surgeries at the Severance hospital, so I will certainly have increased responsibilities and a lot of expectations to live up to.”

Contact Information

Email:  assistdong@naver.com & orthopaedee@naver.com
Bundang CHA Hospital Address: 351, Yatap-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea (Zip Code: 463-712)
Bundang CHA Hospital Central Reservation Number: (+82) 1577-4488

Note: The contact information above is his old clinic address. The Severance Hospital he will be relocating to beginning in the March of 2014 will be in Sinchon- Dong. Click Here for the Wikipedia article on it. The Severance Hospital I’ve been going to is in the Gang-nam area. They are two different hospitals with the same name, but are in two different locations in Seoul.

Our Review

One of the things we look for in a really good surgeon to make us taller is to look for a type of transparency in their practices. From his personal website DrDongHoon.com we feel that Dr. Lee is being very transparent in his practices. When we reviewed Dr. Paley and Dr. Sarin before in posts about a year ago we were not this thorough in our analysis.

What is interesting is that there is no height limit at which he is setting, unlike most North American doctors in the West. Dr. Dror Paley has stated in a few interviews that he almost always rejects males who are already over 1.80 meters in height (or 5′ 11″) from getting the surgery because they are more likely to be suffering from body dysmorphic disorder. Dr. Lee seems to have no objection on doing the surgery on anyone who desires it, as long as they are healthy enough to go through the rehabilitation process.

He states that the surgery is for people to gain some sort of self-satisfaction, not to fix a medical disability.

For a 1st time consultation it would cost about $330. There is no insurance that would cover this type of surgery, since it is cosmetic in nature and not really of a medical concern. So far he has done about 400 or so bilateral leg lengthenings.

Something which Dr. Lee has revealed for an interview on the Make Me Taller forums was to show that while there is no limit to how much length is possible for the bones to grow, there is a limit due to the soft tissue aka muscles around the bones. While you can stretch the bones to be even even a feet longer, the muscles around the bone can only stretched out so long before they snap from having too high of a tensile load.

What we were sort of surprised with was that the interview with Dr. Lee was also posted on the MMT Forums just yesterday (Jan 15th, 2014). It seems that he is finally getting a lot of coverage from all of the major English based websites on the internet.

Personal Background on Dr. Lee

(from his professional website www.BowLegsKnockKneesLegLengthening.com)

1. Entered Yonsei University Medical School in 1991
2. Completed training in orthopedics at Severance Hospital
3. Became a specialist in 2001
4. Two-year fellowship under the guidance of Professor Chang-Dong Han from Severance Hospital
5. part of an Iraq dispatch troop that was stationed in Nasiriya (Operation Iraq Freedom) and served at the Korean Armed Forces Capital Hospital – 9th Airborne Brigade Chief of medicine & Iraq Korean Army medical support committee Chief of medicine
6. Appointed as an Assistant Professor at Bundang CHA Hospital
7. study under Dr. Paley around 2010
8. Completed Baltimore Limb Deformity Course (Sinal Hospital, Baltimore, USA) -2009,2010
9. Completed ISKD training course (Universitatsklinikum Munster, Germany)
10. Paley Advanced Limb Lengthening Institute – Clinical Fellowship

Side Note: Technically there is also another Dr. Donghoon Lee in the University of Washington’s School of Medicine Radiology Department (click for profile). We are NOT referring to that person.

1st consideration you should be aware of before getting surgery in Seoul

There is a slightly unknown practice among the Korean plastic surgery industry to charge a slightly higher price for surgery to foreigners than to the native Koreans. This is partly due to the fact that most foreigners who specifically come to the country for cheaper cosmetic surgery can’t speak the local language. If they spoke the local language, they would be able to talk to dozens of the local clinics to find the best deals on Cosmetic Surgeons.

2^nd Big consideration

There is rather sneaky tactic done by people who write fake positive testimonials for the surgery clinics on the various online forums, like Purse Forum, etc. The fake positive testimonials often end with a message saying that if the person who went in the surgery mention the referrals name, they will get some type of insider’s discount. Of course what really happens is that the referral is a sales person who gets a percentage/commission for every patient they refer to the surgeon.

This factor has been mentioned on websites like on the forums and blog postings on My Seoul Secret and the Limb Lengthening Forum on the thread “Why We Lost Trust and Left“

From reading the threads on the forum, the main reason why the new LLF forum was created was because the people who opened the LLF believes that the SysOp of the older Make Me Taller forum was secretly Apotheosis, who is accused of getting a commission for all people who go for surgery who mention his website or name. There is supposed to be some type of unknown business deal made with the accused SysOp (who is believed to be Apotheosis) and Dr Sringari and Dr. Sarin, and other surgeons who have been heavily promoting their specific method.

Update July 16th, 2014: In a sort of strange coincidence I received a private email message by someone going under the name John. The following message was written…

“Hi, i have enjoy reading your blog, you clearly are a intelligent person who is looking to provide real information exposing all the snake oil salesman. I saw that one of your link in “Forum” is to MMT Forum, maybe you are not aware that the website is a scam too, but only much more dangerous. You can find information on google by searching make me taller exposed. The details are all there. People have been hurt because of information manipulated by the webmaster Sysop who invested money on a couple of cheap indian doctors and promote them via mmt.  He also invested in other doctors  and delete negative feedback about them.  He claims to be impartial……..The details of all these are very long, so take your time to uncover the why and how of it all.  I suggest you consider put some kind of warning that mmt is potentially a dangerous website as the information there is known to be edited or even faked. “

Our Reply: At this point, we have to be completely objective about all the drama that is sort of occurring right now in the grow taller/ height increase website community on the internet. We have no idea what is really going on. We just report what we find on the other websites and let other people sort out their own interpersonal relationship dynamics. If the SysOp admin from the MMT is really promoting bad surgeons to make commissions then that is their choice. They might be misleading people to put themselves into dangerous situations. We are possible consumers just need to educate ourselves and be more informed.

We understand that money can be a very seductive force. Selling, Advertisements, Commissions, Referrals, that is something that will always exist. We will not say that those are bad things since that is the way millions of people around the world earn a living to feed themselves. Cheating or Lying to someone for profit is morally bad but it will always exist.

As for ourselves at Natural Height Growth

Let me be clear right now and say that here at Natural Height Growth we are NOT affiliated with any surgeons or medical clinics which offer the limb lengthening surgery. We do reviews that are as objective as we can make it. Sure, there might be some slight biases but we are trying out utmost to be completely ethical about what we do.

The only affiliate program we are part of is the one with Amazon. We are a part of the Amazon Associates Affiliate program and make on average about $2 for every bottle of supplement (around $40) that is bought through our links, which is not often. I’ve already posted clippings showing the monthly commissions earned from operating this website in previous posts, which is usually less than $10.

We have managed to find his Youtube Channel which allowed us to upload a few of his videos below. To see the his profile, Click Here. His website is at www.BKLL.org