When a rhinoplasty borrows cartilage from the ear, patients worry about two things: a visible mark on the nose, and a scar on the ear that friends might notice. In practice both incisions are deliberately placed to disappear into natural creases — but it is fair to want to know exactly where they sit and how they settle.
Garnet is well known for neck-wrinkle and lifting surgery. The facility is excellent and I’m thoroughly satisfied with the friendly consultation and the surgeon’s skill.
Director Baek In-soo, thank you so much. Thanks to you I keep getting told I look younger — it feels like I’ve gone back to my younger days.
I had upper and lower eyelid surgery and I’m really satisfied. The director and the manager were both so kind and clear.
I started with under-eye fat repositioning — the director and the manager are genuinely kind and good at what they do. I’ll be back.
I came on a referral and was very satisfied thanks to the doctor’s kind consultation and clear explanations. The nurses were friendly too.
I kept reading the reviews and came trusting the many mentions of skill and kindness. The clinic was busy with patients and spotless.
Septal and ear-cartilage rhinoplasty uses your own tissue to define and project the nasal tip — septal cartilage from inside the nose and a small piece of conchal (ear) cartilage as a graft. Because two areas are involved, there are two potential scar sites rather than one: the access incision on the nose itself, and the donor site on the ear where the cartilage is harvested. Understanding both is the key to setting realistic expectations.
Neither of these is the long external scar people sometimes imagine. The ear-cartilage donor incision is tucked into the bowl-shaped fold of the ear or hidden just behind it, and the nasal incision is either entirely inside the nostrils or, in an open approach, a fine line across the central strip of skin between them (the columella). For a fuller overview of how the whole operation is performed, see the parent guide on septal and ear-cartilage rhinoplasty.
It helps to separate scar concerns from swelling concerns. The redness and firmness around an incision is scar healing; the broader puffiness of the nose is a separate timeline covered in the page on when you will see your results.
Conchal cartilage is taken from the concha — the deep, curved bowl of the outer ear, near the opening of the ear canal. The surgeon can reach it through a small incision placed inside that fold (an anterior approach) or through one hidden in the crease behind the ear (a posterior approach). Both routes are chosen specifically because the resulting line falls into a natural shadow that is difficult to see at conversational distance once it has healed.
Removing conchal cartilage does not change the shape or projection of the ear, because the supporting rim and framework are left intact — only a contained section from the bowl is borrowed. The ear keeps its normal appearance, and most patients find that within a couple of months they have to look closely in a mirror to find the line at all.
Because the ear is a slightly different tissue from the nose, its stitches stay in a little longer. At Garnet the ear donor sutures are typically removed around day 10, compared with about day 7 for the nose. For the first week or so a light dressing or support may be used over the ear, and you are asked to avoid sleeping directly on that side. The full day-by-day rhythm is laid out in the recovery timeline guide.
On the nose itself the incision depends on the approach the surgeon judges best for your anatomy and goals. In a closed (endonasal) approach all incisions are made inside the nostrils, so there is no external mark at all. In an open approach a very short incision is added across the columella — the strip of skin between the nostrils — to give fuller access for precise tip work, which is often where ear cartilage is needed most.
The columellar incision, when used, is only a few millimetres long and is placed in a natural break or step in the skin so the eye does not settle on it. Early on it can look pink or slightly raised; over the following months it typically flattens and pales until it is hard to identify. Whether your case is closed or open is something the surgeon decides with you, and it is one of the questions worth raising at your consultation.
Inside the nose, the incisions used to harvest septal cartilage and to access the tip heal under the lining and are never visible from outside. Numbness or tightness at the tip during early healing is common and settles as the tissues relax — it is part of normal nerve recovery, not scarring of the skin.
Scar maturation follows a predictable arc at both the nose and the ear. In the first week the incisions are closed with fine sutures and may look pink, slightly swollen and a little firm — this is the inflammatory, knitting-together phase, and it is entirely expected. Nose sutures generally come out around day 7 and ear sutures around day 10, after which the surface seals over.
From roughly weeks two to six the lines often look their most noticeable: a healing scar commonly passes through a phase of redness or firmness before it improves, because the body is laying down and then remodelling collagen. This can feel discouraging if you do not expect it, but it is the normal middle of the process, not a setback. Gentle protection from strong sun and following your surgeon's aftercare are the most useful things you can do during this window.
Over the following several months the redness fades, the firmness softens and the lines flatten and pale toward your natural skin tone. Most scars continue to mature and quietly improve up to around a year. Because the ear donor site sits in a fold and the nose incisions are inside the nostrils or in a columellar crease, the end point for the great majority of patients is a result that is genuinely hard to see without being told where to look.
Most of what you will notice in the early weeks is normal: pinkness, mild firmness, slight tightness, a small amount of bruising near the ear, and lines that look more obvious before they improve. None of these mean the scar is healing badly. Itching as the incisions knit is also common and tends to ease on its own.
It is worth contacting the clinic, however, if you see signs that fall outside ordinary healing — spreading redness, increasing rather than easing pain, warmth, discharge, an incision that opens, or a scar that becomes notably thick, raised and itchy over time (which can suggest a hypertrophic or keloid tendency). These are uncommon, but they respond best to early attention. If you tend to scar thickly elsewhere on your body, mention it before surgery so the plan can account for it.
Because Garnet is a single-surgeon clinic, the same surgeon who operated reviews your healing at structured follow-ups at 1, 3 and 6 months, and international patients can continue to share photos for assessment after they fly home. That continuity matters most precisely for scar concerns, where small early adjustments to aftercare make the biggest long-term difference. You can also read how the clinic manages pain and anaesthesia across the same recovery.
At Garnet, a single-surgeon clinic in Apgujeong, Seoul, Dr. In-Soo Baek is a board-certified plastic surgeon (Korean medical licence no. 77407) who consults, performs the surgery himself and reviews every follow-up. For ear-cartilage rhinoplasty that means the same surgeon decides where each incision sits, harvests the conchal cartilage, and then judges the healing of both the nose and the ear personally — there is no handover between consult, operation and after-care.
Incision placement is planned around concealment from the start: the ear donor line in or behind the natural fold, and the nasal incision inside the nostrils or in a columellar crease depending on the case. Sutures are removed on the clinic's usual schedule — around day 7 for the nose and day 10 for the ear — and you leave with clear written aftercare for both sites. Garnet is registered with Korea's foreign-patient programme, so consultation, scheduling and follow-up are coordinated for international visitors.
If you are weighing this procedure from abroad, you can send photos for an honest pre-assessment before you travel, and discuss exactly where your incisions would sit. Patients who tend to scar more visibly are given tailored guidance rather than a one-size answer. You can also compare with the results timeline to understand how scar healing and final shape run on slightly different clocks.
Send photos and your question before you travel. An English-speaking coordinator reviews every enquiry and replies with honest guidance on whether surgery is appropriate, the likely plan and timing.
Prefer to chat now? Reach the coordinator directly: