A robot demonstrates a face-lifting treatment in May last year at the 2024 Korean Association for Laser Dermatology and Trichology Academic Symposium and Aesthetic Medicine Device Exposition at COEX Mall in Seoul's Gangnam-gu District. (Yonhap News)

By Koh Hyunjeong

Over a million foreign patients last year received medical treatment in the country and spent a combined KRW 1.4 trillion.

A statistical analysis report on the country's attraction of such patients by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute released on July 28 reported 1.17 million people from overseas received treatment in the country last year, a 93.2% jump from 2023 excluding duplicate visits.

By country of origin, Japan led all others with 441,000, followed in order by China (261,000), the U.S. (102,000), Taiwan (83,000) and Thailand (38,000).

A combined 919,104 such patients used credit cards issued abroad and spent a cumulative KRW 1.4 trillion, or KRW 1.52 million per person.

Dermatology earned the most from credit care payments with KRW 588.5 billion, followed by plastic surgery with KRW 359.4 billion.

The institute said foreign patients and their companions last year spent a combined KRW 7.5 trillion on medical tourism in the country.

Han Dong-woo, head of the institute's Bureau of Global Healthcare, said, "Considering that we had over 260,000 patients from China alone who used Chinese payment services like Alipay and UnionPay as well as cash, the amount was probably billions of KRW more."

hjkoh@korea.kr