How Korea's Medical Tourism System Works for Visitors

South Korea operates a government-administered system for attracting and supporting international patients, built on a dedicated law that took effect on 23 June 2016. Under this framework, medical institutions and attraction agencies must register with the Ministry of Health and Welfare before they can lawfully attract foreign patients, with the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) administering the registration process. This article explains how that system is structured, who oversees it, and what support exists for visitors — at the level of the framework itself, not any individual provider.

The legal foundation

International patient care in Korea is not an informal market. It rests on the Act on Support for Overseas Expansion of Healthcare System and Attraction of International Patients, which took effect on 23 June 2016 (per Presidential Decree No. 27241, 2016). The Act sets out who may attract foreign patients, the conditions they must meet, and the consequences of operating outside the rules.

Official tracking of foreign patients began earlier, in 2009, when Korean law first permitted medical institutions to attract them. The 2016 Act consolidated and strengthened that earlier permission into a fuller support-and-oversight framework.

A few load-bearing facts about the system:

• The framework took effect on 23 June 2016 (Act on Attraction of International Patients).
• Official statistical tracking of foreign patients dates back to 2009, the first year institutions could legally attract them.
• The Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) administers the registration process and operates Medical Korea support services.

Registration: the gatekeeping step

The central mechanism of the system is mandatory registration. Under §6 of the Act, both medical institutions and attraction agencies must register with the Ministry of Health and Welfare before they can lawfully attract international patients. KHIDI is the body that processes and administers this registration.

Registration is not a one-time formality. A medical institution's foreign-patient attraction registration is valid for a fixed term — a three-year validity period under the Act and its enforcement decree — after which it must be renewed.

The system also has teeth. Operating foreign-patient attraction without registration is a criminal offense under the Act, carrying penalties of up to three years' imprisonment or a fine of up to KRW 30 million. In other words, registration is the line that separates the lawful framework from activity outside it.

One further safeguard applies on the clinical-risk side: since 2016, registered medical institutions attracting foreign patients have been required to carry medical malpractice liability insurance. This is a structural feature of the framework rather than a claim about any provider's outcomes.

Support for international visitors

The framework is not only about oversight; it also provides foreigner-facing support. Multilingual consultation and interpretation feature among the evaluation criteria for the system, reflecting an expectation that registered participants can communicate with patients across languages.

KHIDI also operates medical-tourism support centers — including locations at Incheon International Airport and in Seoul — that offer guidance to international visitors. These centers function as a public point of contact rather than a referral or matching service.

Korea additionally recognizes an International Healthcare Coordinator role: a recognized support function within the foreign-patient system, intended to help with communication and care navigation. It is part of the framework's design to make the experience navigable for someone arriving from abroad.

The scale of the system today

How much activity does this framework cover? According to Korea.net (the official ROK government site) and the Ministry of Health and Welfare / KHIDI release, the number of foreign patients who used Korean medical institutions exceeded one million for the first time since tracking began in 2009 — recording 1,170,467 foreign patients in 2024.

A few figures, all from the same government release, give a sense of the picture:

• 1,170,467 foreign patients recorded in 2024 (about 1.17 million).
• This represented a 93.2% increase over 2023 (roughly 610,000 patients the prior year).
• Patients came from 202 countries in 2024.
• Cumulatively, since tracking began in 2009, the total has reached approximately 5.05 million foreign patients.

These numbers describe foreign patients recorded by the official system; they are not framed here as a measure of any provider's quality, and the year-on-year change reflects patient counts rather than a judgment about medical outcomes.

By field, government data reported via Korea.net indicate that dermatology accounted for the largest share of foreign-patient use in 2024 (about 56.6%), followed by plastic surgery (about 11.4%), internal medicine (about 10%), and health checkups (about 4.5%). Government data also indicate that activity is concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area, which accounted for the large majority of foreign-patient use that year.

FAQ

Q: Do I need to be referred through a special agency to get care in Korea? A: The Act governs registration of institutions and attraction agencies, not whether a patient must use one. The framework's purpose is to ensure that anyone attracting foreign patients is registered with the Ministry of Health and Welfare; KHIDI also operates public support centers that offer guidance directly to visitors.

Q: How can I tell whether a provider operates within the system? A: The defining feature is registration. Under §6 of the Act, medical institutions and attraction agencies must register with the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and that registration is valid for a fixed term (three years) before renewal. Operating without registration is a criminal offense under the Act.

Q: Is there official help available when I arrive? A: Yes. KHIDI operates medical-tourism support centers, including at Incheon International Airport and in Seoul, and the framework recognizes an International Healthcare Coordinator role to support communication and care navigation. Multilingual consultation and interpretation are part of the system's evaluation criteria.