By MARTIN FACKLER

SEOUL - A grim frugality has settled over this export powerhouse that once burst with optimism? and silicone.


Cosmetic surgery took off here after South Korea’s spectacular recovery from its currency crisis a decade ago. Rising living standards allowed ever-growing numbers of men and women to get the wider eyes, whiter skin and higher nose bridges that define beauty for many here. Improved looks were even seen as providing an edge in this high-pressure society’s intense competition for jobs, education and marriage partners.


But turmoil coursing through the financial world and then into the global economy has hit South Korea hard. The crisis drove down the stock market and the currency by a third or more last year, and the resulting anxiety forced many South Koreans to change their habits.


A particular chill has seeped into the plastic surgery industry.


“In hard times, people always cut back on luxuries like eating out, jewelry and plastic surgery,”said one plastic surgeon, Park Hyun, who has seen the number of his patients drop sharply.“If this is a normal recession, then these desires will eventually get reignited, and our patients will come back.”


Dr. Park added:“If this downturn is like the Great Depression, then we are all going to get killed off.”


Seoul-based ARA Consulting, which specializes in the plastic surgery industry, said reports from surgeons and local media suggest the number of patient visits each month is down 40 percent since September.


From a luxury limited to the wealthy a decade ago, according to ARA, plastic surgery has become so common that an estimated 30 percent of Korean women aged 20 to 50, or some 2.4 million women, had surgical or nonsurgical cosmetic procedures last year, with many having more than one procedure.


Nowhere has the boom, and the unfolding bust, been more apparent than Seoul’s fashionable shopping neighborhood of Apgujeong. More than half of South Korea’s 627 registered cosmetic surgery clinics are here. But their once-crowded waiting rooms are empty. For sale signs have begun appearing on clinic doors, and some 20 clinics have already closed.


“This is the Mecca of plastic surgery in Asia,”said Dr.Park.“But even a Mecca can fall on hard times.”


Dr.Park said December would normally have been his peak season because high school seniors finish South Korea’s grueling university entrance exams and prepare for winter graduation. He said the exhausted students? and their equally stressed mothers? often celebrated by getting cosmetic surgery.


Not last December. Dr.Park said his patient load was down by half, leading him to lay off three of his seven nurses and office workers.


Sung Myung-soon can sympathize. Like millions of South Koreans who recently emerged into the middle class, Ms.Sung, a 54-year-old homemaker, regularly visited the plastic surgeon. But now she has cut back by making fewer visits to her plastic surgeon and bargaining hard for discounts. She refuses to give up her plastic surgery altogether.


“Even at times like these, women still want their plastic surgery,”she said . But she chose less expensive procedures, like Botox injections to remove wrinkles .


Dr. Park and other plastic surgeons said the country’s decline has brought one promising sign: South Korea’s currency has fallen so far that procedures here are now cheap when calculated in dollars and other currencies. This has led to growing numbers of Japanese, Chinese and Korean Americans coming to Seoul for relatively inexpensive procedures. Some clinics said 20 to 30 percent of patients are now foreigners, up from 10 percent last year.


Jang Yeon-jae recently moved to a small clinic in northern Seoul, in hopes of drawing new customers.


“Before,I focused on profitable procedures”like breast enlargement, he said.“Now, I take every little procedure, even just removing a single mole.”