What Does True Beauty Mean to the Soul Doctor Who Brings Happiness?
When people first sat down with Dr. Oh Myung-jin, they poured out everything they wanted like a dam breaking open. Once they finished, he would simply ask, "Why?" That single question was a wake-up call to patients who had been consumed by the desire for beauty without even knowing why they wanted it. The reason they smiled when they saw their transformed selves was happiness. In other words, the pursuit of beauty is an effort to find happiness, and cosmetic treatments are tools to get there, just like cosmetics. But can choosing such an important path as easily as picking from a menu truly lead to happiness?
Most plastic surgery clinics and dermatology offices line their signs with treatment lists or display before-and-after photos. But The S (now Maison Privé) had none of that. All you could find was the fact that it was a clinic and where it was located. While there are countless ways to become beautiful, only you truly know the path to your own happiness. Why do you want to be beautiful? Why do you pursue beauty? Dr. Oh dedicated himself to exploring these fundamental questions with each patient, working alongside them to find the best possible treatment.
Introducing a Familiar Kind of Newness.
Dr. Oh was a familiar kind of newness to people. Every clinic was friendly, but he never just told people what they wanted to hear, because he genuinely cared about their happiness. There are many ways to pursue beauty, but those ways should never be the same for everyone. He understood better than anyone that enhancing your strengths while softening your weaknesses is the true path to natural beauty and happiness.
His philosophy stood out in the entertainment world as well. At the time, beauty standards were cookie-cutter, as if stamped out of a factory. But for celebrities, especially idol groups, individuality was everything. Dr. Oh's approach of highlighting strengths and minimizing weaknesses was truly one of a kind. Before long, the most famous celebrities in Korea and abroad, along with entertainment agency CEOs, were lining up for his consultations.
The reasons even the most stunning top stars visited Dr. Oh were not so different from anyone else's. They were satisfied doing what they loved and receiving the public's adoration, but the relentless pace of their lives quietly took its toll, causing stress that eventually showed up as inflammation in their bodies. Dr. Oh's approach always began with comforting and soothing their hearts first, then addressing the skin or body concerns that had stolen their happiness. That is how he earned the nickname "Soul Doctor." The expression may seem a little much, but he truly was a healer of souls before he was a physician.
Around the time Dr. Oh Myung-jin became a household name and his clinic was renamed Dr.O S. Clinic, he began his broadcasting career in earnest, starting with the very first season of Superstar K, one of the most-watched TV shows at the time.
The Celebrity Doctor's Nickname "Soul Doctor" Becomes Known.
Plenty of doctors have appeared on television. But Dr. Oh was different. He was not there to promote his clinic. He was already widely known as a celebrity physician, appearing as a paid star doctor and beauty director. He was a regular on every season of Superstar K from Season 1 through 7, and received offers from all three major broadcasters SBS, KBS, and MBC, as well as beauty channels like Get It Beauty, to the point where it began to interfere with his primary responsibility: treating patients at his clinic.
To trainees who were still unknown but destined to become future top stars, Dr. Oh was not just a doctor who improved their appearance. He was a new kind of physician who strived to heal their inner struggles and sorrows first. This genuine dedication resonated with the public, and his nickname "Soul Doctor" struck a national chord. To this day, googling "Soul Doctor" brings up Maison Privé, making it a defining term for Dr. Oh and his Beauty-Aging center.
Dr.O S. Clinic was successful enough to thrive without relying on marketing. More than half of all patients were top stars, celebrities, and entertainment agency trainees, and that ratio remains the same today. To prevent them from running into each other awkwardly (some even belonged to the same idol group), the clinic puts its best effort into appointment scheduling and private escorts. While many clinics post celebrity photos for marketing, Dr. Oh, who understood their privacy concerns from years of working together in broadcasting, always asked them to keep things discreet.
Behind the success, Dr. Oh could not stop reflecting. Broadcasting had certainly helped build his reputation, and he was grateful for the precious connections it brought. But to fulfill his ambition of creating an anti-aging center that could truly restore people's lives and happiness, he needed to push forward. His heart began racing, just as it had 15 years earlier when he first opened The S.
Whether by coincidence or fate, good news arrived from Busan. Ananti, one of Korea's most prestigious five-star luxury hotel & resort brands, proposed a collaboration with Dr. Oh.
Ananti Meets Dr. Oh.
A harmony of contradictory wishes. Ananti's focus has always been on travel that stands apart. They understood that guests seeking extraordinary getaways wanted a place that was quiet and secluded yet never boring, surrounded by mountains and sea but free of bugs and discomfort, a place where contradictory desires could coexist. Ananti Cove, a luxury hotel built in Gijang, Busan in 2017, is exactly that kind of space. Designed around the concept of a castle above the sea, Ananti Cove offers both tranquil rest and vibrant activities, allowing each guest to enjoy their lifestyle on their own terms.
Ananti's spatial philosophy of timeless beauty and Dr. Oh's medical philosophy of restoring people's lives and happiness clicked together like finding the last missing piece of a puzzle. Dr.O & Ananti Private Clinic, a hospital unlike anything anyone had experienced before and Asia's first resort medical center, was born from that meeting of inspirations.
From Well-Aging to Beauty-Aging
Through Dr.O S. Clinic and Dr.O & Ananti Clinic, one word kept circling in Dr. Oh's mind: anti-aging. Translated literally as "preventing aging" or "fighting aging," the term never sat well with him. It might seem strange that someone so passionate about anti-aging would dislike the word, but his reasoning makes perfect sense.
He disliked how the prefix "Anti-" made people view aging negatively. Aging is something that naturally comes with time for all living beings, including humans. The beauty he pursued was not about blindly rejecting this reality. Instead, he believed in embracing the passage of time and elevating even aging itself into something beautiful, cherishing what he called "natural beauty."
Dr. Oh's longtime friend and fashion model Girolamo Panzetta is a prime example of this natural beauty. Having worked in broadcasting and modeling in Japan for over 25 years, Panzetta became such an influential figure in Japanese men's fashion that he is often called the most famous Italian in Japan after Leonardo da Vinci. He has also been the exclusive model for LEON, a popular Japanese fashion magazine launched in 2001.
While most fashion magazines feature a rotating cast of models to showcase new trends, LEON uniquely focused on one single model, Girolamo Panzetta, and maintained its popularity over the years. This was likely because the magazine recognized early on his natural beauty, a charm that only grows more refined and dapper with the passing of time.
Perhaps influenced by connections with such remarkable people, or maybe inspired by the word "well-being" which carried significant cultural weight at the time, Dr. Oh first came up with the term "Well-Aging." Well, meaning "good," "proper," or "right," seemed like the perfect bridge to reframe aging as a journey toward discovering one's natural beauty.
People responded positively to Well-Aging, but something still felt incomplete to Dr. Oh. Simply aging well was not the motto he wanted to pursue for a lifetime. If the path to restoring people's lives and happiness lay in discovering their natural beauty, then the real message should be that "even aging is beautiful."
After much thought, "Beauty-Aging" came to him. Two seemingly incompatible words connected in a moment of magic. And he needed a new space to share this vision with people. That space, the one we know so well today, is Maison Privé. And that is how it all began.