No. of medical vacationers visiting Korea may hit report excessive in 2024: gov’t officers
By Jung Min-ho
A collective walkout by junior docs throughout Korea has disrupted the operations of main hospitals over the previous seven months. This has led to some observers questioning what impression this turmoil can have on the nation’s efforts to turn out to be a medical tourism powerhouse.
In keeping with officers from the federal government and medical establishments, it in all probability will not have any important impression.
“We predict the variety of medical vacationers to Seoul may attain as many as 500,000 this 12 months, greater than final 12 months’s 470,000,” an official on the Seoul Metropolitan Authorities’s tourism division advised The Korea Instances. “We now have been advised that the protest has primarily affected sure companies of basic hospitals (similar to emergency care) however not those that the majority vacationers come right here for, similar to pores and skin therapy and cosmetic surgery.”
A PR official at a hospital in Incheon mentioned there have been “no noticeable modifications within the variety of international sufferers” for the reason that walkout started in February.
In 2023, a complete of 605,768 international nationals visited Korea to obtain medical companies, a report excessive and a big enhance from the earlier report of 497,000 in 2019, simply earlier than the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In keeping with knowledge from the Ministry of Well being and Welfare, greater than 35 % of them sought pores and skin remedies, adopted by beauty surgical procedure (16.8 %), inside medication (13.4 %) and basic well being checkups (7.4 %).
Most of these remedies are carried out by docs at clinics, which haven’t been affected by the protests, a ministry official mentioned.
“Practically 70 % of such remedies are performed at clinics,” a director on the ministry’s well being care trade division mentioned. “Many medical vacationers have come. It might be untimely to foretell this 12 months’s complete quantity. However it might in all probability be across the similar as final 12 months.”
If they like, they will additionally obtain these companies at basic hospitals, which usually supply most companies throughout daylight.
When requested whether or not a foreigner may make a reservation for a pores and skin therapy, a receptionist at a basic hospital in Seoul confirmed that it might be potential. The web sites of main hospitals recommend that their service facilities for international sufferers are working usually.
All this reveals that the walkout by trainee physicians, in protest of the federal government’s choice to hike medical faculty admission quotas, isn’t anticipated to have a considerable impression on medical tourism.
Amid the continued protest by docs and information reviews in regards to the ongoing chaotic state of affairs at emergency rooms, the Korea Tourism Group has been selling and reassuring medical vacationers that they are going to haven’t any downside receiving the therapy they want in Korea.
“In latest months, we have now strengthened the promotion of companies supplied by clinics,” mentioned an official on the state-run group tasked with selling the nation’s tourism trade. “Many clinics say they’ve handled extra international sufferers this 12 months than final 12 months.”
In 2023, the ministry introduced a plan to draw greater than 700,000 vacationers for medical functions by the tip of 2027.
As a part of this effort, the ministry mentioned it might introduce a sequence of latest insurance policies to make it extra handy for foreigners, together with a plan to extend the variety of Justice Ministry-authorized medical establishments from 27 to 50 to permit them to enter Korea on medical visas.