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Foreign Patients, Korea
in 2025, nearly double 2024 | 2M+ |
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Korea Skin-Clinic Patients
foreigners in 2025, 5x in two years | 1.3M |
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Avg. Savings
vs. US pricing | 40–80% |
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| The Seoul Skin Trip That Pays for Its Own Flight |
| Gangnam, Seoul. |
| Cindy Gu spent part of her spring in a waiting room at Lienjang, a skin clinic that sees about 100 foreign patients a day. |
| The 30-year-old video editor from the States had booked a facial lifting treatment, and a Reuters reporter wanted to know why she came so far. |
| She has plenty of company. |
| Just over two million foreigners traveled to South Korea for medical care last year, nearly double the 1.17 million in 2024. |
| And most of them came for their skin. |
| Dermatology clinics treated about 1.3 million foreign patients in 2025, five times the number from two years earlier, according to Korea’s health industry institute. |
| Interesting… |
| So what pulls a video editor across the Pacific for a facial? |
| Partly the cost, which stays low for a simple reason. |
| South Korea has roughly 15,000 clinics offering skin treatments, and Lienjang’s head of aesthetic dermatology says all that competition drags prices down. |
| Take ultrasound lifting, which most Americans know by the brand name Ultherapy. |
| In New York, a session runs $2,500 to $5,000. |
| Seoul’s 2026 clinic price guides put a full face of 300 “shots” (pulses of ultrasound, not the fun kind) at around $850 to $1,000. |
| Ultherapy, full face (300 shots) |
| 🇺🇸 New York | $2,500+ |
| 🇰🇷 Seoul | $850 |
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| | | “A variety of K-beauty treatments… not even offered in the US” | | Cindy Gu, video editor from the US, to Reuters |
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| In other words, the cost is only half the story. |
| Rejuran, the salmon DNA shot Seoul is famous for, isn’t FDA-approved as an injection, so New York doctors can only rub it on after a laser or microneedling. |
| I find that part more telling than the price. |
| But the money is hard to ignore. |
| Lienjang says its foreign patients spend about 1.5 million won each, roughly $1,000. |
| A direct round trip from Newark runs around $960, so one Ultherapy session plus the flight comes to $1,810 before the hotel. |
| That’s less than the cheapest New York price for the treatment alone. |
| Spread over a year, it’s about $150 a month… and the trip comes with Seoul attached. |
| Many clinics also hire multilingual coordinators, so you won’t have to mime your way through a consultation. |
| Now the part I’d want to know first. |
| Most of those 15,000 places are run by general doctors rather than skin specialists, according to the Association of Korean Dermatologists. |
| And a beauty clinic isn’t a JCI-accredited hospital like Severance, Seoul’s big university medical center. |
| So ask who will actually hold the device, and request proof it’s registered with the government to treat foreign patients. |
| Will prices stay this low as the crowds keep growing? We’ll see. |
| For now, the flight pays for itself. |
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| SAERO Plastic Surgery, Seoul |
| Breast augmentation · April 2026 · bookimed.com |
| ★ 4.9 |
| Keani booked her breast augmentation with Dr. Park at SAERO, a plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam, and made the long flight home to Hawaii afterward. |
| Her coordinator, Joanne, stayed attentive from start to finish, and Keani says that made her feel safe and well cared for. |
| The recovery is where her review gets specific. One day after surgery she was walking around Seoul, riding public transport and seeing the sights she had planned. Beyond the first few hours after waking from anesthesia, she reports some discomfort but no real pain, which she puts down to Dr. Park’s precision (and, she jokes, maybe her own fast healing). |
| SAERO added IV therapy, red light therapy and hyperbaric oxygen sessions to her recovery, and the team checked in on her consistently. Keani called that follow-up “such a green flag” and compared it with US doctors who, in her experience, often focus only on the operation. |
| She recommends Dr. Park to anyone looking for attentive, professional care. SAERO is a private clinic and doesn’t list JCI accreditation on Bookimed; it averages 4.9 across 32 verified reviews there. |
| Keani, Hawaii Verified Patient |
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| Quick Reads |
| Destination |
| Hyderabad Wants a Bigger Slice |
| Telangana’s top civil servant told officials on October 9 to draw up a full strategic plan for selling the Indian state as a medical and wellness destination, under its 2025–30 tourism policy. The pitch rests on Hyderabad, which already has 89 hospitals accredited by India’s NABH and eight with JCI accreditation. In other words, the hospitals are there; what’s missing is the marketing. No campaign dates or price lists have been announced yet. But putting the state’s most senior official behind the push suggests this is more than a press release. This is one to watch. |
| Trend |
| Malaysia Just Had Its Best Year Yet |
| Malaysia welcomed about 1.84 million healthcare travelers in 2025, bringing in roughly RM3.34 billion, the highest revenue since its Healthcare Travel Council was set up. The momentum carried into 2026: Penang alone logged around 285,400 medical tourists in the first six months, worth RM601.8 million. The country has branded 2026 its first national Year of Medical Tourism, with a target of RM12 billion a year by 2030. Most patients still come from nearby Indonesia. But with more than 80 partner hospitals courting travelers from farther afield, Americans may start hearing a lot more about Kuala Lumpur and Penang. |
| Safety Note |
| The Clinic Hiding Behind a Textile Shop |
| On September 13, health enforcement officers raided four premises on Lebuh Pudu in central Kuala Lumpur that were posing as textile sellers and travel agencies. Two were believed to be operating as illegal clinics, aimed squarely at foreigners and suspected of being run by foreign doctors (nobody was inside when officers arrived). An investigation is under way to identify the tenants and the people acting as doctors. The lesson travels well beyond Malaysia: a country’s good hospitals don’t vouch for every shopfront that offers care. Book through licensed hospitals, check the registration yourself, and walk away from any “clinic” you can’t verify. |
| Beauty |
| Korea’s Surgery Boom Got Upstaged |
| Foreign plastic surgery patients in Korea more than doubled between 2023 and 2025, from about 114,000 to 233,100. In most countries that would be the headline. Here it’s the footnote, because skin clinics grew so much faster that surgery’s share of all foreign patients slid from 16.8% to 11.2%. Dentistry doubled too, reaching 32,775 foreign patients, and eye clinics jumped almost 41% in 2025 alone. The breakdown came out alongside Seoul’s medical tourism trade fair in early September. I’d expect the pitch to American patients to lean harder on lasers than on scalpels. |
