Due to the transition of the global Covid-19 pandemic into an endemic phase, there was a significant 70.1 percent rise in the number of international patients seeking medical treatment in Korea in 2022 compared to the previous year, government data showed.

On Thursday, the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) released the "2022 Foreign Patient Attraction Performance Statistical Analysis Report," which was compiled from medical institutions registered to attract foreign patients.

The report includes the number of foreign patients who used Korean healthcare services from 2009 to 2022, and the trend of foreign patients by factors such as gender, age, nationality, type of treatment, type of medical institution, region, and medical department.

According to the report, the total number of foreign patients visiting Korea in 2022 was 248,110, a 70.1 percent increase from the previous year.  Since the collection of data began in 2009, the cumulative number of foreign patients who have visited the country has reached 3.27 million.

Among the foreign patients who visited Korea in 2022, the largest proportion came from the U.S., comprising 17.8 percent of the total. Following closely behind were patients from China at 17.7 percent, Japan at 8.8 percent, Thailand at 8.2 percent, and Vietnam at 5.9 percent.

Notably, patients from Singapore and Japan have increased 6.2 and 5.6 times in 2022 compared to the previous year.

In 2022, all medical specialties experienced an upsurge in foreign patient numbers compared to 2021. Internal medicine witnessed the most significant increase, with a growth rate of 22.3 percent. It was followed by plastic surgery with a rise of 15.8 percent, dermatology with 12.3 percent, health checkup centers with 6.6 percent, and orthopedics with 3.9 percent.

Among the regions in Korea, Seoul emerged as the top choice for foreign patients, attracting the highest number of visitors at 160,000, accounting for 59 percent of the total. Gyeonggi Province ranked second with 40,000 patients, making up 16 percent, while Daegu received 14,000 patients, representing 5.6 percent of the total.

By type of medical institution, clinics accounted for the largest share (36.3 percent), followed by general hospitals (28.8 percent), tertiary general hospital (18.9 percent), hospitals (10.7 percent), and dental clinics (2.3 percent).

"2022 was a year of recovering half of the patients that visited Korea in 2019, which was before the pandemic, and we expect the pace of recovery to accelerate in 2023 and beyond,” KHIDI’s Bureau of Global Healthcare Director Lee Haeng-shin said. “Attracting foreign patients is a high value-added business with high growth potential, and KHIDI plans to explore various strategies to attract foreign patients so that Korea can become a global medical tourism country.”