Man who paid £300,000 to be 'Korean women' slams harmful surgeries

2023-02-26

I spent £250,000 to look like a Korean woman… but I’ve gone back to being a MAN: ‘De-transitioner’s journey to the opposite gender and back again

EXCLUSIVE: Oli London, 33, became one of first people to identify as ‘transracial’
After spending £250,000 on surgery he is now a detransitioned man
The influencer has slammed gender self Id laws and ‘harmful’ surgeries

Oli London has come a long way from the ‘depressed’ influencer who stunned the world in 2018 with the announcement he was identifying as Korean.

At the time, the ‘transracial’ 33-year-old had spent £64,000 trying look Korean- just over a sixth of the £300,000 worth of ‘damaging mutilations’ he would put himself through in pursuit of ‘validation.’

In the space of a few years, the influencer with millions of followers across TikTok and Instagram went under the knife and had 32 procedures performed on him including having nose and chin surgery and having his cheekbones shaved down.

During that time, Oli’s gender, sexuality and racial identity fluctuated wildly from bisexual to transgender to transgendered Korean women – but in 2022, something in him snapped.

He told MailOnline: ‘I suddenly realized, the more surgery I have the unhappier I am.

Oli London, 33, is in a state of detransition after undergoing surgery to become a transgender Korean woman

Oli London pictured in 2022 as a Korean woman – before deciding to detransision back to being a man

Oli underwent over 30 painful feminization procedures in his quest to look like a Korean woman

‘I used to spend hours in church praying for clarity and then I realized I’d made a mistake.

‘It was a case of mutilating myself further or stopping and trying to get back to the old me.’

Now a year into his detransition into being a man, Oli has become a surprising new voice in the cultural debate around gender identity and reassignment surgery and penned a new book about his journey through his own gender.

And he has a lot of things to say.

After announcing his detransition, Oli claims to have received support and criticism from all corners.

He explained: ‘A lot of people were very kind to me, the conservatives and Christians.

‘The trans activists were disgusting and vile to me, what they said was horrific.

‘I’ve been the target of hate campaigns, they’re trying to cancel my book and sending me death threats, saying I should be stoned to death.

‘It’s all because I’ve said children shouldn’t be transitioned and that woman should have safe spaces – how’s that controversial.’

Oli, pictured as a five year old boy in 1995, said he always struggled with his identity

When he was a student, Oli travelled to South Korea and had his first piece of surgery done

Oli said he was pushed by dissatisfaction with his male body and craved validation

But what does he think caused a shy little boy from London to grow up and ‘mutilate’ himself over 30 times?

When tracing the roots of his own gender dysmorphia, Oli says his experiences more or less mirror the cliched talking points of the condition.

He explained: ‘I was born a male and as a kid I would sometimes dress up in girl costumes with the handbag and the heels. The first cassette I ever bought was Cher and I played with Barbie not Action Man, but many kids do that these days.

‘When I became a teenager I was teased and bullied for my looks, I had bad acne and a big nose. None of the girls would want to date me, they said I was too much like a girl, I was called feminine.

‘These are some of the reasons I think I developed body dysmorphic and ultimately got depressed.’

Oli’s dissatisfaction with his body and his appearance pushed him towards looking for solutions – regardless of how drastic they were.

He explained: ‘I’d always questioned my identity my whole life.

‘When I was 23 I went to South Korea to teach English.

‘It’s the plastic surgery capital of the world, there’s a million procedures performed there every year, there was a pressure for me to change myself there, to prove bullies wrong.

‘Initially I fixed my nose, the surgery was quite scary and it went wrong so I had to get it fixed, the first few went wrong and it became an addiction.

‘I loved the way Koreans looked so I began to obsess over looking like them, I began to try and use surgery.

‘In 2019 I returned and had jaw, chin surgery and shaved down my cheekbone and had nose surgery, It gave me temporary happiness so I had more in Turkey and USA.

Oli after spending £250,000 to look like a Korean woman

For over a year Oli lived as a transgender woman but says he always wanted more surgery no matter how far he went

‘I’d always questioned my gender identity, now I’d had my surgery I looked more feminine and In 2021 I began to think maybe I am a woman?

‘So I had more surgery to feminise my face into that of a Korean woman, I thought why not, so many people want to look like Kim K, how is it a big deal.

‘I felt good for a period of time. It got to a stage where I was just cannonballing between the two. I considered doing body surgery which would be irreversible and then I pulled myself back.

‘It was self-destructive, people having this surgery think it’s a fix and that they deserve to go through the pain – but there’s another way.’

Since stepping away from the operating table, Oli says he has found greater clarity about himself and now understands the pattern of erratic behavior that dominated his twenties.

He said: ‘When I announced I was Korean I was going through a mental health crisis at that time.

‘The reason I wanted to be Korean was I was accepted there. The identity was trying to fit in, I was chasing validation.

‘I want people to learn from what I did.

‘It’s perfectly normal for people to explore themselves and their identities but when it comes to medically transitioning someone, people shouldn’t be fast tracked.

‘Don’t put yourself through pain for temporary solutions. There will be regret once you cut off body parts.’

After finding his faith, Oli is now ‘the happiest he’s ever felt’ and living as a new man.

‘I had a husband but we divorced’, he says, ‘I’ve always been bisexual so I want to date a woman next as I’m a man again.’

And despite being one of the most high profile trans people in recent memory, Oli has a perhaps surprising answer to a question that has flummoxed both Sir Kier Starmer and the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon: What is a woman?

He said: ‘A women is someone that’s born a women – you cannot change biology.

‘When I had all that surgery, I felt like a women, and looked like a women, but I wasn’t, I was Trans.

‘Know that if you want to live in the body of the opposite sex you need to respect women.’

Oli says he has now detransitioned and is the happiest he’s ever felt

Oli has written a memoir ‘Detransition’ about his journey through gender identification

He’s also particularly critical of the Scottish government’s gender recognition reform bill – a piece of legislation that reduced the minimum age a person can apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate from eighteen to sixteen, and removed the need for a medical diagnosis and evidence of having lived for two years in their acquired gender.

This according to Oli, spells trouble.

He said: ‘The thing with self Id is that so many young people like to explore who they are

‘What they had in place in Scotland before the new bill was fine, now they’ve removed the safety of women’s spaces as anyone can just say they’re a women.

‘It’s harmful to let everyone skip all the checks and balances that protect everyone.’

Detransition: A Memoir is available for pre-order now on Amazon.

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