Korea Medical Tourism Glossary
What the words in the statistics and explainers on K-Medical Tourism Institute mean. Where the law or the statistics use a term narrowly, such as registered institution, facilitator, registration or renewal, the entry says how narrowly.
Contents
Words and units in the statistics
- Foreign patientinternational patient; 외국인환자
- The legal term for a patient who is a foreign national and is not a subscriber or dependent under Korea's National Health Insurance. People who have completed alien registration (other than those on a G-1 status) and overseas Koreans with foreign nationality who have reported a domestic residence count as residents and are excluded. The term is therefore narrower than "any foreigner treated in Korea."
- Registered medical institutionregistered hospital; 외국인환자 유치의료기관
- A hospital or clinic that has registered with its city or provincial governor in order to attract foreign patients. To register, it needs at least one specialist physician in each department that will treat foreign patients, plus medical liability insurance or membership of a medical indemnity mutual aid association. The 2009-2022 statistics count these institutions by region.
Korea Registered Hospitals for Foreign Patients - Facilitatorregistered facilitator; 외국인환자 유치사업자
- A business other than a medical institution that has registered with a city or provincial governor in order to attract foreign patients. It must hold guarantee insurance of at least KRW 100 million, capital of at least KRW 100 million and an office in Korea. Facilitators are not in the 2009-2022 statistics; the 21 Jul 2026 list has 2,733 of them.
Korea Medical Tourism Hospitals by Region - Registered organizationsinstitutions and facilitators together; 유치기관
- The Korean term 유치기관 covers registered medical institutions and registered facilitators together. The Korea Health Industry Development Institute's list dated 21 Jul 2026 puts both in one file and separates them by a type column: 4,188 medical institutions and 2,733 facilitators.
- Registration등록
- The step a medical institution or facilitator must complete with its city or provincial governor before attracting foreign patients. Korea introduced the registration system in 2009 through an amendment to the Medical Service Act, and since 23 June 2016 the requirements have been set by a separate Act. The source statistics do not say whether a yearly figure counts institutions holding a registration at year end or institutions registered during that year.
- Regionsido; city or province; 시도
- The regional unit of the statistics: 17 cities and provinces, from Seoul to Sejong in the order of the source file. Names follow the source, and there are no figures below this level, such as districts or counties.
Korea Medical Tourism Hospitals by Region - National totalnationwide figure; 전국 합계
- The sum of the 17 regional values. The source file has no total row, so K-Medical Tourism Institute adds the regions itself; the 2022 figure is 2,023. It includes Gyeonggi's 2022 value of 12 as published (151 in 2021).
Korea Registered Hospitals for Foreign Patients - Capital areaSeoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi; 수도권
- Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi added together. In 2022 the three had 1,373, or 67.9% of the national total, a figure that includes Gyeonggi at 12 as printed in the source.
Korea Medical Tourism Hospitals by Region - Unique patients실환자
- The unit in which the Ministry of Health and Welfare reports foreign patients: people treated at each institution, with repeat visits to the same institution not added. The figures are based on what registered institutions report and leave out consultations, remote care and proxy prescriptions. It is a different statistic from the number of registered institutions; 248,110 unique patients were reported for 2022.
Korea Registered Hospitals for Foreign Patients
The registration system
- Act on Support for Overseas Expansion of Healthcare System and Attraction of International Patientsthe Act; 의료해외진출법
- The Korean law that sets the registration requirements, validity period and penalties for attracting foreign patients. It was enacted on 22 December 2015 and took effect on 23 June 2016; the text K-Medical Tourism Institute read is the version in force from 12 May 2026.
- Registration with the governorregistering authority; 시 · 도지사 등록
- Under the current Act, registration is made with the city or provincial governor (시 · 도지사). The Act as first in force in 2016 had the Minister of Health and Welfare receive registrations. Questions about registration paperwork are handled by local governments.
- Validity and renewalregistration renewal; 등록 유효기간, 등록 갱신
- A registration is valid for three years from the registration date and must be renewed before it expires. The renewal application goes to the city or provincial governor within the two months before expiry. Institutions registered before the Act took effect had to renew by 22 June 2017.
- Medical liability insurancemedical indemnity mutual aid association; 의료사고배상책임보험
- Insurance a medical institution must hold in order to register. Membership of a medical indemnity mutual aid association is accepted instead, and the annual coverage limit must be at least KRW 100 million for clinics and hospitals and KRW 200 million for general hospitals.
- Registration certificate등록증
- The document showing that an institution or facilitator has registered. Article 8 of the Act, on protecting foreign patients, provides for the certificate to be displayed and for patients to be told the diagnosis, treatment method and possible side effects, given a treatment contract with estimated costs, and told how disputes are resolved.
- Unregistered solicitationillegal solicitation; 미등록 유치
- Attracting foreign patients without being registered. Article 28 of the Act sets a penalty of up to three years in prison or a fine of up to KRW 30 million, and the same applies to an organization that keeps attracting patients after its registration is canceled, it closes or it fails to renew.
Help for Foreign Patients in Korea
Organizations and services in the data
- Korea Health Industry Development InstituteKHIDI; 한국보건산업진흥원
- The institute that released the registered-institution statistics, the per-institution list and the Medical Korea list of official websites on the Korean Public Data Portal. It also runs Medical Korea, the foreign patient attraction information system and the report center for illegal solicitation of foreign patients.
Korea Registered Hospitals for Foreign Patients - Medical Korea메디컬코리아
- The name of the official website run by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute at medicalkorea.or.kr. The registration search, the Medical Korea Information Center page and the report center sit under this address, and the list of 36 official websites (data as of 29 Aug 2023) also comes from Medical Korea.
Official Medical Tourism Websites in Korea - Medical Korea Information Center메디컬코리아 지원센터
- A help desk for foreign patients, reached at +82-2-1577-7129 every day from 09:00 to 18:00 Korean time. It handles visa questions, information on medical institutions, help with reservations, complaints and disputes, and questions about illegal brokerage, and it can pass a dispute on to the Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Agency.
Help for Foreign Patients in Korea - Foreign patient attraction information systemregistered institution search; 외국인환자유치정보시스템
- The Medical Korea screen, in Korean, for looking up registered institutions and facilitators. It offers a search by business registration number and a list that can be filtered by name, type and region.
- Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration AgencyK-MEDI; 한국의료분쟁조정중재원
- The agency that mediates and arbitrates disputes over medical accidents; the system applies to foreign nationals as well. A case is handled within 90 days of the start of mediation, extendable by up to 30 days, and the consultation line is 1670-2545.
Help for Foreign Patients in Korea - Report center for illegal solicitation of foreign patients외국인환자 불법유치행위 신고센터
- An online desk that takes reports of unregistered organizations attracting patients and of registered ones giving false information. Anonymous reports are not accepted. After a review the report goes to the local government concerned, which decides whether there was a violation and what action to take.
Help for Foreign Patients in Korea
Reading aids
- Reference datedata as of; 자료 기준일
- The date a dataset refers to, taken from the date in the source file name. It is 31 Dec 2022 for the registered-institution statistics, 29 Aug 2023 for the list of official websites and 21 Jul 2026 for the per-institution list. It is not the upload date: the statistics file was added to the Public Data Portal on 13 Dec 2023.
- Link check접속 확인
- The result of K-Medical Tourism Institute opening each of the 36 addresses in the list of official websites on 5 Oct 2026. A site is marked "Opens," "Path changed (home page opens)," "Could not verify automatically" or "No response." It records only whether the address opened that day, so "No response" does not mean a site has been shut down.
Official Medical Tourism Websites in Korea - Per-institution listthe list; 외국인환자 유치기관 현황
- A file the Korea Health Industry Development Institute published as of 21 Jul 2026, with 6,921 rows, every one of them with the status "maintained." It holds 4,188 medical institutions and 2,733 facilitators, and 33 rows have "test" in the institution or representative name. K-Medical Tourism Institute uses only counts by region and type and does not reproduce the list itself.
Korea Medical Tourism Hospitals by Region - List versus statistics2022 statistics and the 2026 list; 명단과 통계의 차이
- The 2022 statistics add up to 2,023 nationwide, and the 21 Jul 2026 list has 4,188 medical institutions. The statistics are yearly totals with no stated definition and the list is a row-by-row register, so they are built differently, and no official page explaining the gap was found. For that reason no change or growth rate is calculated between the two.
Korea Medical Tourism Hospitals by Region