Im Ji-yeon Got an Eyeliner Tattoo at 20 and Still Can't Get Rid of It

Actress Im Ji-yeon has one item at the top of her vacation to-do list, and it has nothing to do with rest. On a recent episode of Jo Hyun-ah's YouTube channel Ordinary Thursday Night, she said the first thing she wants to tackle on her next break is getting rid of an eyeliner tattoo she's had since she was 20.

"I got a semi-permanent eyeliner tattoo at a shop near my school," she explained. "Back then I didn't know how to do my makeup, so I thought it would be convenient." A friend went with her. It was trendy at the time. It seemed like a low-stakes call.

It wasn't. "It didn't fade like semi-permanent, it stayed like it was permanent," she said. "It's still there. It's way too dark."

The gap between semi-permanent and permanent tattoos comes down to how deep the pigment is injected. Semi-permanent procedures deposit pigment in the upper layers of skin, where it gradually lightens over a few years. Go deeper, or use a denser pigment, and the color holds, sometimes indefinitely. The thin, sensitive skin around the eyes also tends to lock in color more vividly than other areas, which is why eyeliner tattoos in particular can outlast their intended lifespan by a wide margin.

Im Ji-yeon knows laser removal is an option, but it's not a simple one. "They say you can remove it, but the swelling is really bad," she said. "You need recovery time, so I haven't been able to do it yet."

Laser removal works by breaking pigment particles into smaller fragments that the body then clears out, but a single session rarely does the job. Denser pigment requires multiple rounds, and the eye area, being thin and reactive, tends to swell significantly after each treatment. For someone with an active filming schedule, committing to that kind of downtime isn't straightforward.

Her candid admission lands as a reminder that eyeliner tattoos carry more long-term weight than their convenience pitch suggests. The depth of application, the pigment formula, the technician's skill level, and even proximity to the eye's mucous membrane all factor into how a procedure heals, and how reversible it actually is. Starting too dark, as Im Ji-yeon's case shows, makes correction considerably harder down the line.

For now, she's waiting for a schedule gap long enough to handle the aftermath. Given how she described the swelling, that gap might need to be a real one.