Dear members of the Korean Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association

Dear colleagues,

I would like to express my deep gratitude to the executives and members of the Korean Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association (KCPCA), who have given me the opportunity to serve the association and its members.

After experiencing unprecedented challenges in our daily lives due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) over the past 3 years, we now start to see the light at the end of this dark pandemic tunnel. However, despite these disruptions, this period has been marked by substantial academic achievements through various conferences, seminars, and workshops, which were made possible by the passion and effort of various executives, including the secretary chairman and former president of the association. As an example of splendid achievement, our journal, Archives of Craniofacial Surgery, has been indexed in Scopus, going above and beyond our prior accomplishment of inclusion in PubMed. In addition, the publication of textbooks related to facial trauma and craniofacial surgery, which has been an ambitious goal of our society, is proceeding smoothly, and the KCPCA/Korean Society for Simulation Surgery (KSSiS) International Joint Symposium with American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons (ASMS), a new type of academic meeting, is scheduled to take place in April 2023 as an opportunity to hold academic exchanges with relevant international associations. This will be a special event that I am eagerly looking forward to. Regarding all these achievements, I would like to express my gratitude and respect once again to the secretary chairman and other executives of KCPCA for their dedication.

In retrospect, K-culture and K-beauty have exerted a significant degree of influence worldwide, especially in the period immediately before the COVID-19 outbreak, and it would be difficult to talk about this phenomenon without giving due credit to “K-plastic surgery.” Furthermore, I speculate that “K-craniofacial surgery” is what has distinguished “K-plastic surgery” from other sectors of the medical field.

Once we no longer routinely have to cover more than half of our face, the public demand for facial beauty will rebound. Indeed, once this happens, the craniofacial aesthetic field will again become an arena of competition for diverse sectors of the medical field. However, even in challenging situations, the KCPCA will continue to make professional efforts to overcome any obstacles we face. In particular, we will endeavor to prepare effective guidelines that incorporate up-to-date advances in medical science and patient-centered practice, while considering patient safety systems, principles of medical ethics, and evidence-based medicine. We will also make our best efforts to establish a safe surgery system within our field that patients can trust and rely on.

On behalf of the KCPCA, I congratulate all of our members for their hard work in our field to date, and wish each of you a happy new year.