Medical Tourism at Crossroads between Opportunities and Crises

The medical tourism industry of Korea is at a crisis, as public opinion in China, the number one customer, is getting worse. The risk and the number of cases of serious medical accidents have been on the rise as more medical tourists have plastic surgery in Korea. 

Experts point out that no patient at all may visit Korea for medical tourism once the Chinese government puts a restraint on it, because China is a controlled society in various aspects. “This is why an increasing number of Chinese media are reporting medical accidents in Korea these days,” one of them mentioned, adding, “We need to overhaul the system in order to tackle the situation.”

Fortunately, though, the majority of Chinese people still have a positive image about Korea’s medical technology and skills. Korea has a competitive edge in price, too. A laser-based wrinkle treatment costs approximately 10 million won (US$9,065) in China, but just 1.5 to 2 million won (US$1,360 to $1,813) in Korea. 

This means the prosperity of medical tourism depends on the efforts of the Korean government to address problems such as illegal attraction of tourists by unregistered firms, hospitals’ direct transactions with unregistered foreign firms and the lack of an organization to represent registered firms.