Foreign patients visiting Korea hit record high in 2023

The number of international patients visiting Korea for medical tourism hit 606,000 in 2023, a 2.4-fold spike from 248,000 in 2022, the government said on Monday. 

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the annual number of foreign national patient visits to Korea in 2023 was a record high since the government started tallying the data in 2009.

Foreign patients refer to foreign nationals not residing in Korea and are not enrolled in the national health insurance program or are not dependents of the program.

Foreign patients steadily grew with an annual growth rate of 23.5 percent from 2009 to 2019 but the number plummeted to 200,000 in 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The accumulated number of foreign national patients reached 3.88 million as of 2023, the ministry said.

By country, Japanese patients took up 31 percent of the total, followed by Chinese with 18.5 percent, American with 12.7 percent, Thai with 5.1 percent, and Mongolian with 3.6 percent. 

From Japan, 157,000 patients came to Korea to receive mostly skin care or plastic surgery in 2023, and this number was the largest among 198 countries since 2009, the ministry said.

The number of Japanese and Taiwanese patients skyrocketed by 763 percent and 867 percent in 2023, compared to a year earlier, mainly due to growing visits to dermatology, plastic surgery, and oriental medicine clinics.

By specialty, 35.2 percent of foreign patients visited dermatologists, followed by plastic surgeons with 16.8 percent, internal medicine doctors with 13.4 percent, and health check-up centers with 7.4 percent. 

By type of medical institution, 66.5 percent of foreign patients used clinics, 13.5 percent, general hospitals, and 10.6 percent, tertiary hospitals.

Compared to 2022, the growth rate of foreign patients visiting oriental medicine clinics marked a steep increase of 690 percent, followed by clinics, 347 percent, and dental clinics, 70 percent. 

Out of the total of 606,000 foreign patients, 78 percent went to medical institutions in Seoul, followed by 8.4 percent in Gyeonggi Province, 2.5 percent in Daegu, 2.4 percent in Incheon, and 2.1 percent in Busan.