A group of tourists from Mongolia poses for the camera during a welcoming ceremony at Jeju International Airport in South Korea’s southern resort island of Jeju on June 22, 2022 in this photo provided by the Korea Tourism Organization.
SEOUL, April 25 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of foreigners coming to South Korea for medical treatment is rapidly returning to pre-pandemic levels, data showed Monday.
There were 248,000 non-resident foreign individuals who received medical treatment in South Korea last year, indicating a 70.1 percent increase from 2021 and 50 percent of the level reported in 2019, when the country received 497,000 medical tourists, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
Among these medical tourists, Americans made up 17.8 percent, followed by Chinese (17.7 percent), Japanese (8.8 percent), Thai (8.2 percent), and Vietnamese (5.9 percent).
China accounted for the largest share of medical tourists in the pre-pandemic era.
Despite the current foreign travel restrictions, the number of Chinese nationals visiting South Korea increased by 56.8 percent last year compared to the previous year.
The number of Japanese medical tourists also rose more than sixfold from the previous year due to the rising popularity of plastic surgery and skincare, with Japan moving from eighth to third in the rankings of medical tourists to South Korea.
The number of foreign medical tourists increased in all medical departments from the previous year, especially in the dermatology (201 percent) and plastic surgery (177.7 percent) departments.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
