Eye Bags and Aegyo-sal

A co-worker asked “So, how old are you?”

“24.”

“Ahhh.”

“Are you married? Any children?”

“Nope. Haggard lang po.”  (Nope. Just plain haggard.)

Sigh.

I was 8:30 am and I was in a 7-11 store wearing my best just-rolled-off-the-bed look when a guy from school suddenly appeared, pinched my cheek, and loudly said “Ang laki ng eye bags mo ah!” (Hey, your eye bags are huge!”)

Sigh.  I was born with eye bags. I like to think they’re aegyo-sal.

***

If you have the addiction to anything Korean like I do and you’re silly enough to Korean watch shows even without subtitles (like I do) you have probably heard the term “aegyo” and when someone is asked to do aegyo, he or she looks at the camera and makes a cute expression.

Aegyo comes from the Chinese characters “ae” meaning love, and “gyo” meaning beautiful. Beautiful love? Well, the closest English word to aegyo is winsome.

Definition from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Winsome: generally pleasing and engaging, often because of a childlike charm and innocence

When you have aegyo, you can charm other people, especially elders, with your sweetness, cuteness and all the other pleasing nesses you can think of.  No aegyo? Don’t worry, that can be achieved through the magic of cosmetic surgery.

Aegyo-sal is simply under-eye puffiness, and over there in Korea people actually go under the knife to have them. Understand that aegyo-sal is different from having eye bags—the dark, bulging flesh that gives the appearance of exhaustion and age is the exact opposite of the slight under-eye poofy-ness that gives a youthful charm. (Or so the Koreans say.) While we on other parts for the world try to get rid of our eye bags aegyo-sal, Koreans want to have them because they make the eyes appear bigger and cuter. Here are some celebrities with aegyo-sal:

Goo Hye Sun of Boys Over Flowers fame

Yoon Eun Hye from the K-Drama Coffee Prince

Yunho of the boyband Dong Bang Shin Ki

Seo Hyun of the girlband Girls' Generation

Aegyo-sals look so much better than eyebags:

So, what do you think? Eye bags or aegyo-sal? (There’s really good lighting here in the office. )