Am I pretty?

Back in October I played the Never Ending Story with my kids (one kid writes three words on the board, the next kid writes three words, on and on until every one has written something and it all fits into one story), however, it was the Never Ending Scary Story! Muwahaha!

Anyhow, a lot of the kids wrote something about the "red mask" and I had no idea what they were talking about--I assumed it had something to do with a recent movie (Koreans love horror flicks)--until today, when I happened upon the Red Mask urban legend...

빨간 마스크
Long ago, a girl with an extremely small mouth went in for plastic surgery (only in Korea would a horror story begin with plastic surgery!) and came out with slice from ear to ear due to a botched plastic surgery. Horrified by her ugly face, she was forced to wear a red surgical mask for the rest of her life in order to hide her mutilation. However, she never recovered psychologically, and the pain of being ugly drove her to insanity. She started cornering small children on elementary playgrounds and would ask them, "Am I pretty?" If the child said yes, she would rip the mask away from her face and say, "Even like this?" and proceed to kill the child by slicing their face from ear to ear, just like her's. Those who say no when asked if she's pretty have their throats cut.

Gruesome.

The legend supposedly came from Japan but it's found wide popularity amongst Korea's image driven youth... Maybe there is such a thing as vanity insanity...