Botox vs Filler for Wrinkles in Cheongdam, Gangnam, Seoul

Both treatments are performed at Dear Clinic and both are published on the same rate list, which is what makes the examination worth trusting: there is no product here that needs finding a use for. What decides the plan is the reading, and the reading has two more layers beneath the first one — how deep the crease has been cut, and whether the tissue around it has flattened.

The third possibility is the one people forget. A face can have neither problem and simply carry dull, finely crinkled surface over healthy structure, which is a skin-quality complaint and answers to neither injection in its classic form. That reading sends the conversation to skin treatments, and your director will say so before anything is drawn on your face. For a broader view of how the two materials differ outside the wrinkle question, the general comparison sits on the botox and filler page.

Two of those rows are worth pausing on. A flat forehead and a lined forehead are the same anatomical region asking opposite questions, and the products that answer them are not interchangeable. And a fold that only appears when you smile is not the same finding as one visible while your face rests, which is the distinction the nasolabial filler page works through in detail.

Korean pharmaceutical advertising rules keep prescription toxin product names off public pages, so the toxin column shows tiers; your director names the product in the room. Every figure above is the published rate, identical for residents and visitors, and intermediate tiers and specialty-area rates sit on the price list. No duration in months is printed for either material, because how long a dose holds and how long a gel lasts both move with the area, the amount placed and your own metabolism — your director gives you the expected pattern for the exact plan you approve.

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• Softening the movement stops the groove deepening. Where the muscle is still folding the same line daily, quieting it removes the force that has been cutting the crease, which is why toxin usually goes first in a combined plan.
• The groove already cut does not disappear on its own. Softening movement shallows a set crease slowly and rarely erases it. What sits in the line, or under the tissue beside it, is a separate decision made after the movement has settled.
• Sequence is a clinical choice. Your director sets the order and the interval between the two, since placing gel into a groove that is still being folded hard is a shorter-lived correction than placing it into one that is not.
• Sometimes the second step is not needed at all. A proportion of faces look enough better once the movement is softened that the filler conversation is postponed, and postponing it is free.
• Fine crinkling across a whole zone is a third category. Micro-dosed full-face toxin at ₩150,000 (≈ $105) addresses surface quality by quieting activity in the skin itself, and it does not compete with either of the two routes above.

A single appointment often carries both materials on one face: toxin across the upper third, hyaluronic acid in the mid and lower third. Each area and each cubic centimetre is quoted as its own line, and you approve the list before any of it begins.

On the toxin side the failures are about position and amount. A heavy forehead dose can lower the brow and leave the upper lid feeling weighted. An uneven map can peak one eyebrow above the other. Spread beyond the intended muscle can alter a smile or how the lower lip sits. Bruising at an entry point, brief swelling and a headache in the first day or two are the ordinary events. Every one of those is temporary, and every one of them has to be waited out, because nothing reverses a toxin dose.

On the filler side the ordinary events are swelling, tenderness and bruising over a few days, with lumps, visible edges and asymmetry as the correctable ones. The serious risk is vascular: gel entering or compressing a vessel can starve the skin it supplies, and in the worst reported cases the eye. That is why pain out of proportion to the procedure, skin turning white or dusky over a treated area, or any change in vision means telephoning the clinic the same hour and not waiting for a review. Hyaluronidase, the enzyme that dissolves hyaluronic acid, is both the correction for a result you dislike and part of how that emergency is managed.

Neither material is offered during pregnancy or breastfeeding, or where there is infection, inflamed skin or an open wound in the field to be treated. A neuromuscular condition in your history changes what can be offered on the toxin side entirely. Tell your director about blood-thinning medication or supplements, about previous injectable work and what was used, and about any reaction you have had before. Where the finding is laxity that needs lifting, or a surface complaint that needs skin treatment, we do not recommend either injection, and that conversation happens before payment. Results vary between individuals and suitability is decided at your own examination.

Unretouched case treated at Dear Clinic and shown with consent, labelled only with the treatment it actually received. Individual results may vary.

It is the clearest illustration of why the examination comes before the product. The same forehead, presenting with horizontal lines instead of a flattened plane, would have been a toxin plan at a different rate on a different part of the price list.

Peer-reviewed work behind both columns of this comparison

1. CARRUTHERS J et al. Treatment of Glabellar Frown Lines with C. Botulinum‐A Exotoxin. The Journal of Dermatologic Surgery and Oncology. 1992. doi:10.1111/j.1524-4725.1992.tb03295.x
2. Carruthers J et al. The Convergence of Medicine and Neurotoxins: A Focus on Botulinum Toxin Type A and Its Application in Aesthetic Medicine—A Global, Evidence-Based Botulinum Toxin Consensus Education Initiative. Dermatologic Surgery. 2013. doi:10.1111/dsu.12148
3. Frevert J. Pharmaceutical, Biological, and Clinical Properties of Botulinum Neurotoxin Type A Products. Drugs in R&D. 2015. doi:10.1007/s40268-014-0077-1
4. de Maio M et al. Facial Assessment and Injection Guide for Botulinum Toxin and Injectable Hyaluronic Acid Fillers: Focus on the Upper Face. Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. 2017. doi:10.1097/prs.0000000000003544
5. Fagien S et al. Rheologic and Physicochemical Properties Used to Differentiate Injectable Hyaluronic Acid Filler Products. Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. 2019. doi:10.1097/prs.0000000000005429
6. Scheuer J et al. Anatomy of the Facial Danger Zones: Maximizing Safety during Soft-Tissue Filler Injections. Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. 2017. doi:10.1097/prs.0000000000002913

References are provided for information — outcomes vary by individual and are assessed at your diagnosis.