Deep Plane Facelift vs Traditional: The “Byun Vector” Up-and-In Technique Explained

Most people wonder how Dr. BYUN came up with the most simplistic, yet brilliant idea of placing the muscles back up and in where they once were. Why has no one else considered this? The answer is conformity; While in his residency at Northwestern University, Dr. BYUN broke away from the standard ideologies of Plastic Surgery. Dr. BYUN challenged the ways of his attending surgeons and instructors when it came to the facelift approach. This wasn’t easy because he had to gently bring up his ideas, while being a good student and listening to his professors’ teachings. While watching his professors, he would think about how the muscles should be brought back in like shingles of a roof, rather than being pulled and stretched to a foreign location. Over time, Dr. BYUN finally gained the ability to showcase his idea, and performed the first BYUN Muscle Restoration, over 25 years ago. From that point forward, he became the first and only person at Northwestern University to dive under the muscle, using an endoscope to create a pathway under the muscles in order to reposition them. Diving under the muscle is how he is able to bring them back up, telescoping them back in where they once were. Once the muscles are restored, he goes back and repairs the skin by repositioning it firmly against the newly repositioned muscles and tissues, making sure to not cut a lot of the skin off, like many other surgeons do. Dr. BYUN truly is a pioneer in the field of plastic surgery and cell biology, as no other surgeon can offer this technique with such long lasting results. 

It is of great importance to note the differences between a BYUN Muscle Restoration, and a standard facelift. In order to appreciate the true beauty and value of a BYUN Muscle Restoration, your view on facelifts as a whole must shift. A BYUN lift yields results that are very natural. His goal is to keep you looking like you, while repairing your muscles, restoring the cellular foundation. This sets you on a completely different trajectory in terms of aging. Every wrinkle or “flaw” will not be erased, however, you will return to how you looked 5-20 years ago. Dr. BYUN loves the challenge of resetting his patients back to a younger version of themselves!  Dr. BYUN will only repair the face by bringing everything back “up and in”, compared to the overused “up and out” technique. He is directionally different from his peers, which makes all the difference. Other surgeons ‘tent’ the skin when lifting the skin up and out, which will leave you with a noticeable unnatural and ‘wind-tunneled’ appearance. These patients are left appearing ‘stretched’, ‘stuffed’ or both. Dr. BYUN makes it his goal to keep each patient looking like themselves. Repairing the muscles back up and in is the most physiologically correct way to repair the muscles. Fine details like this are what makes Dr. BYUN’s technique, uniquely superior. 

Alternatively, if your preference is to change your appearance entirely, then Dr. BYUN will not be the right surgeon for you, as Dr. BYUN truly repairs your tissues, rather than making them take a new form. Dr. BYUN will bring you back to your youthful days by making you look bright, energized and refreshed. Dr. BYUN does not rely on fat grafts or fillers to achieve these results. Surgeons use these methods to ‘fake’ the bulky muscle appearance because they have relocated them to non-native positions. Dr. BYUN has found that these trendy procedures are more dangerous than most are led to believe. They easily distort one’s face and can even travel, expand or calcify.

Dr. BYUN’s Muscle Restoration is not for everybody. However, the money spent on this highly sought after treatment is well worth the price tag. Once you experience a BYUN Muscle Repair, you truly slow down, or even stop the clock. This is proven by countless patients of Dr. BYUN who state that they are aging more slowly, or not at all, especially when compared to others they know. Being frozen in time is truly a priceless experience. 

It’s hard to put a price tag on something that is truly one of a kind. Dr. BYUN has been proudly named, “The Facelift Guru”. No one else is performing this face restoration technique. Because of demand and He does limited surgeries each week, Due to the intricacy and uniqueness of each Face Restoration Case, Dr. BYUN can only perform a limited number of these surgeries. 

The price does reflect that the number of surgeries performed each week is limited.

Dr. BYUN breaks the face into four ‘Zones’ starting from the neck to the top of your forehead. Zone I (Neck), Zone II (mouth area), Zone III (midface), and Zone IV (forehead). For example, He can bring back that energetic eye look you miss having by focusing on Zones III and IV. Breaking up the face into different Zones is something Dr. BYUN did to make his signature technique more accessible, so everyone can experience a piece of his art. 

You will spend far less time and money trying to stay young by undergoing Dr. BYUN’s muscle restoration, rather than using and depending on trendy procedures such as fillers, PDO threads, fat grafts, and lasers. Once you become Dr. BYUN’s patient, he promises 30+ years of service to each patient, asking for them to come into the office at least once a year. His passion for his craft, and taking care of each patient is very apparent, adding to what makes him so different.  

Dr. BYUN currently sits as a Biomedical Engineering board member at Northwestern University. He carefully chooses medical students and engineers to teach his technique to. Dr. BYUN loves to refer to his technique as a true reset, as his facelift truly honors one’s cells and tissues. He was more recently recognized by the Zuckerbergs for his contributions to cell research, as they develop a BioHub in Chicago. 

Dr. BYUN has been steadily building his client base since his residency. His patients have seen the legitimacy and longevity of his work. Most of them have been seeing him for 25 years. In fact, he is so trusted by his patient base that they begin bringing their kids for botox, facials, or cosmetic surgery as needed. Not to forget their endless referrals which Dr. BYUN deeply appreciates. If you can see and appreciate the subtle, artistic BYUN difference like these patients, then you are already a great candidate for Dr. BYUN’s famous muscle restoration.

The Northwestern Foundation: Dr. Peter McKinney

My journey began at Northwestern, under the watchful, exacting eye of Dr. Peter McKinney. Peter was more than a mentor; he was the conscience of plastic surgery. Until his passing in 2025, he remained a beacon of anatomical precision.

McKinney taught me that the face is not a sheet of paper to be pulled tight; it is a complex, multi-layered machine. When I developed my “Repair” philosophy, it was built on the bedrock of McKinney’s insistence that we must respect the underlying structures before we ever touch the skin.

The Deep Plane Revolution: Dr. Sam Hamra and Dr. John Owsley

In the 1990s, the “Deep Plane” changed everything. Dr. Sam Hamra (who practiced until his passing in 2024) and Dr. John Owley (who guided the field until 2014) were the titans who realized that the skin is merely a passenger. To truly fix a face, you had to go beneath the muscle layer.

However, as I practiced their techniques, I noticed a flaw: the lateral pull. Even a deep plane lift, if pulled toward the ears, creates a “windblown” look. I took their deep-tissue discoveries and asked,

“What if we changed the direction?” If Hama gave us the plane, I wanted to provide the correct vector.

The Architecture of the Bone: Dr. Paul Tessier

No name carries more weight in my philosophy than Dr. Paul Tessier, the “Father of Craniofacial Surgery” (d. 2008). Tessier taught us that the most stable, most natural lift happens at the skeletal level— the subperiosteal space. My “Up and In” approach is a direct evolution of Tessier’s craniofacial principles. By lifting the muscles off the bone and repositioning them centrally, I am architecturally rebuilding the face from the foundation up.

The Artistry and Soul: Dr. Ivo Pitanguy

Finally, there was the “King,” Dr. Ivo Pitanguy (d. 2016). From him, I learned that a successful surgery isn’t measured by a lack of wrinkles, but by the restoration of a person’s “glow.” He taught me that the ultimate goal is for the patient to look like themselves – only rested.

The Solution: The Byun “Up and In” Vector

Traditional surgery pulls “Up and Out.” When you pull a face toward the ears, you flatten the cheeks and widen the mouth. This is a horizontal vector, and it is the enemy of beauty.

Aging is not just a descent; it is a migration. The face slides out away from the center.

Because I trained during the era of these legends, I realized that to look young, we must move the tissue “Up and In”-toward the midline of the face.

1. Midline Restoration: We don’t pull the jowls toward the ears; we lift the midface back toward the nose and the eyes. This restores “baby cheek” volume.
2. Muscle Repair, Not Skin Tension: Working exclusively on the muscle and fascia means there is zero tension on the skin—no “pulled” mouth and no stretched scars.
3. The Subperiosteal Lift: Taking Tessier’s lead, I go to the bone. This allows for a lift that lasts decades because it is anchored to the most stable structure in the body.

A Living Link to History

When you choose a surgeon, you are choosing their lineage. Most modern surgeons have only seen these legends in textbooks. I saw them in the theater of the operating room. 1 held the retractors for the hands that built this industry.

My insistence on this level of detail comes from the honor of working with these legendary surgeons myself. In an era of commercialism, fast TikTok transformations, and YouTube videos featuring swollen faces disguised by lighting tricks and makeup, I refuse to compromise. I cannot live with that superficiality when I think of the masters. I owe them better.

This is why I dedicate myself to Face Expression Preservation through my Cell Reservation Technique. My goal is to put every structure back, layer by layer, exactly where it came from. There are no gimmicks. There are no Hollywood makeup or hair tricks to hide the work. My process is brutally honest and painfully tedious, but it is the only way to deliver a result that is true to the anatomy and respectful of the history that built it.

Why Can’t Other Surgeons Replicate Dr. BYUN’s results?

In the high-stakes world of plastic surgery, patients are increasingly sold a “method” rather than a master. Marketing terms like the Deep Plane, the SMAS lift, or the Ponytail lift are presented as if they were standardized products one could simply buy. But after more than twenty years in the trenches of Level 1 facial trauma, I feel a moral obligation to pull back the curtain and tell you the truth: a facelift is not a commodity. It is a profound, structural reconstruction of the human identity.
Many of my colleagues attempt to replicate the “BYUN look”—that elusive, petite, firm, and naturally narrowed facial proportion that defines youthful vitality. Yet, they often fall short. They produce faces that look wider, heavier, “drag queen” hard, or “operated on.” To understand why my results are so difficult to duplicate, you must look past the marketing and into the intersection of four critical pillars: extreme reconstructive discipline, cultural dexterity, innate artistry, and a genuine, lifelong commitment to the patient as a doctor.

I. The Trauma Pedigree: The Authority of the Deepest Layers
To perform a facelift that actually reverses aging—rather than just masking it with tension—one must understand the face from the bone outward. My perspective was not forged in a boutique aesthetic clinic; it was forged in the chaos of a Level 1 Trauma Center. For two decades, I, Dr. Michael Byun, served as the Director of the Facial Trauma Team at Lutheran General Hospital. In that role, I was the conductor of a high-stakes orchestra, coordinating the talents of neurosurgeons, ENT specialists, oral surgeons, and plastic surgeons.

While each of those specialists knew their own specific “neighborhood,” I was the only one who had to understand the entire city. I had to understand how a LeFort fracture affects the sinus, how a frontal sinus repair impacts the brain, and how to reconnect the microscopic “plumbing” of the face under a microscope using microvascular anastomosis.

Most aesthetic surgeons work from the “top down,” peeling back the skin and looking only at the surface layers. I work from the bone up. If you haven’t mastered the repair of congenital facial bone anomalies in children or the reconstruction of a shattered midface, you are merely a “skin tailor.” To perform a true BYUN lift, the surgeon must act as a facial architect. I know exactly how the bone, nerve, muscle, and fascia behave as a single, living unit because I have had to rebuild them when they were in pieces.

II. The Joystick and the Chopstick: The Mastery of the Endoscope
There is a massive generational and technical divide in my field. Many surgeons prefer “open” procedures—they want to peel everything back to see what they are doing. While this is standard, it is often too traumatic for the delicate midface, leading to scarring and prolonged swelling. I utilize the endoscope as a “joystick.”

This requires a level of hand-eye coordination that many find impossible to master late in their careers. You are performing surgery in a three-dimensional space while looking at a two-dimensional screen. My ability to do this is rooted in my heritage. In Korea, children are taught to use metal chopsticks from a very young age. Unlike wooden chopsticks, Korean metal ones—traditionally silver for the nobility to detect toxins—are heavy, slippery, and sharp.

To master them requires a level of fine motor discipline that becomes hard-wired into the brain. As a Korean-American, I combined this ancient dexterity with the superior medical training of the United States. When I pick up an endoscope, it is an extension of my hand. This allows me to perform “Byun Facelift” maneuvers—adjusting the deep plane, the fascia, and the skin simultaneously with “chopstick” precision—without the “brute force” of traditional surgery.

III. The Lost Generation of Artists
There is a deeper reason why true mastery in this field is becoming a rarity: we are losing our naturally gifted “artists” to other fields. The children who possess an innate understanding of art, proportions, shapes, and the raw emotion of beauty are often funneled into design schools, architecture, music, and pure science.

Very few of these creative souls choose medical school. And of those who do, almost none ever master the brutal, decades-long technical discipline required to apply that art to human anatomy. To achieve the BYUN result, you cannot just be a technician; you must be an artist who survived the rigors of reconstructive medicine. You must be able to “see” the beauty, the emotion, and the subtle balance of a face before the first incision is ever made. Without the eye of a painter, a surgeon is just a technician moving tissue.

IV. The Genuine Doctor: A Lifelong Covenant
Finally, the fourth pillar—and perhaps the most important—is the heart of a genuine doctor. When you look for a surgeon, you must ask: Do they have a heart? Can they truly listen to you? Will they hold your hand through the fear and the recovery? Are they a doctor for you for the long haul?
In an era of “revolving door” surgery, I pride myself on being a doctor for my patients for a lifetime. I have patients who come back to me 20 years later for their second facelift. They return not just because of the technical result, but because they know I am still here, still committed to their well-being, and still holding the same standard of care I did two decades ago.

A master surgeon doesn’t just “do” a surgery and move on; they enter into a covenant with the patient. It is about the long-term relationship. It is about understanding how that face will age ten, fifteen, or twenty years down the line. If a surgeon lacks the empathy to listen and the heart to care for you long after the stitches are out, they aren’t a true doctor—they are a contractor.

Why Others Fail: The “Width” and “Weight” Problem
When I see “before and after” photos from other surgeons, I see the same recurring failure: the face looks “lifted,” but it also looks wider and heavier. They add volume through hard implants or pull tissues toward the ears, creating a wide, “wind-swept” appearance.

A youthful face is petite and firm. It is a compact, elegant triangle. As we age, that triangle inverts; muscles separate and slide down and out, creating a wide, heavy jawline. Other surgeons try to fix this by “filling” the emptiness, which creates a “drag queen” look—hard, static, and wide.

The BYUN technique is a “Reverse Facelift.” I repair the muscles and move them back toward the midline, narrowing the face while I firm it. This requires an understanding of nerve strength and “muscle fall” that is simply not taught in standard fellowships. It is the specialized knowledge of a craniofacial reconstructive expert who has the heart to listen to what the patient truly wants: to look like a younger, more petite version of themselves.

A Word of Caution
AI and internet forums will tell you that one “Deep Plane Lift” is as good as another. They are wrong. When you choose a surgeon, you are not choosing a method; you are choosing their history, their culture, their artistic eye, and their heart.

If your surgeon hasn’t headed a trauma team, if they lack “chopstick dexterity,” if they weren’t trained as an artist, and if they aren’t willing to be your doctor for the next twenty years, they are guessing. The face is a sacred geography. Do not trust it to someone who only knows how to read a map. Trust the one who helped build the city and will be there to maintain it for the rest of your life.

Revolutionary Vision,
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