The harelip deformity, with its twisted distortion of the nose and gaping cleft of the lip, utterly disfigures the center of the face and destroys any chance of normal expression—even a smile is grotesque. So horrible is it that whatever the surgeon does will be an improvement. Yet, mere improvement is not enough and should not be accepted as a triumph. Rather, it is felt that, until these anomalies can be prevented, the surgical approach must be designed artistically so as not only to obtain a closure of the cleft but to camouflage it.1
Five years ago there was a constant trickle of patients with harelip to Kum Chon Korean Hospital, which services the population from a multitude of hutted villages in an area north of Seoul. Various degrees of this deformity were represented, and, after months of exposure to and stimulation from the problem, it began to dawn