Inside South Korea's Cosmetic Tourism Boom
Nestled beneath towering skyscrapers sit rows and rows of cosmetic, aesthetic and dermatologic clinics, studded with adverts displaying slender, doe-eyed women with dewy porcelain skin and taglines like 'Do you want your life to be like a movie?' Locals call it 'Plastic Surgery Street,' and it's become an unlikely tourist attraction as what foreigners imagine to be the white-hot core of the world's beauty capital.
In 2023, South Korea's government announced a goal to attract 700,000 medical tourists by 2027. By the end of 2024, nearly 1.2 million foreign patients had travelled to the country with over half seeking out dermatologic treatments and cosmetic surgery, according to its Ministry of Health and Welfare.
While better known for its beauty exports, South Korea has also earned a global reputation for its normalisation of beauty procedures; a 2018 study published in Aesthetic Plastic Surgery found that over one in three Korean women in their 20s had received cosmetic surgery. Foreign patients visit not only to try new, experimental treatments featuring salmon DNA or stem cells, but to take advantage of the more accessible prices of the treatments they may already get at home. Forehead Botox that costs upwards of $400 in New York could cost as little as $30 in Seoul.
Isabella Chen, a New York-based beauty content creator and founder and CEO of talent management company Becca Mgmt, underwent 13 skin treatments in South Korea between March and November 2024 and estimated that they cost as little as a tenth of the price they'd run her in the US.
'In Korea, everything is negotiable,' Chen said.
But these patients face unique challenges when receiving treatment in South Korea, on top of the risks associated with any form of medical tourism. Strict defamation laws, language and cultural barriers and an ongoing nationwide doctors' strike threaten to upend the quality of foreign patients' care and overall experiences.
And for many, the cultural acceptance of cosmetic procedures that attracts droves of medical tourists looks a lot less glamorous from close up. Behind the Boom
As a global beauty superpower, South Korea's influence has reached a new inflection point, having overtaken France as the biggest exporter of cosmetics to the US last year. Retailers like Sephora and Ulta Beauty are currently riding K-beauty's second wave, with a new slate of brands making their international debuts.
Medical tourism to South Korea has also risen alongside growing awareness of Korean culture around the world, also known as hallyu. Nearly half of patients polled in a 2023 survey from the Korea Health Industry Development Institute said they were influenced to seek out services in the country by Korean media, a 25 percent year-on-year rise. Those patients, who mostly comprised people in their 20s and 30s, spent an average of nearly $2,000 more on treatments than other tourists.
'Korean culture in general just has, like, such [an] incredible cachet,' said William Ban, chief operating officer of medical tourism concierge service Himedi, which was founded in 2017 to accommodate foreign patients in South Korea. The agency assists these tourists, most of whom come from North America and the Middle East, with selecting hospitals and booking lodging, appointments, transportation within the country and translation services.
Businesses like Himedi can thrive in South Korea thanks to the Ministry of Health and Welfare's ongoing mandate to attract medical tourists, first announced in 2009. Since then the country has slackened visa restrictions, implemented cosmetic surgery tax refunds and partnered with medical tourism agencies, including Himedi, to make it easier for foreigners to obtain health and aesthetic care in the country. The government has come to rely on its multibillion-dollar medical tourism sector partly as a bulwark against the negative economic impacts of its rapidly declining birth rate, which is among the lowest in the world.
Korean practitioners offer a wider range of treatments than what one might find in the US or Europe; Rejuran, a treatment that harnesses salmon DNA-derived polynucleotides to promote skin elasticity, is one of the country's most popular medical services. Visitors also tend to seek out more standard procedures, which are less expensive to obtain in Korea than they are elsewhere — eyelid surgery and rhinoplasty are the two most commonly performed cosmetic surgeries, while nonsurgical patients tend to opt for picosecond lasers or microneedling with radiofrequency. Patients are incentivised to receive multiple treatments at once with bundled deals at heavy discounts, which is how Dieux co-founder and CEO Charlotte Palermino wound up getting eight laser treatments in one day.
But even patients who are allured to South Korea for its openness about cosmetic procedures can find the culture bristling in person.
'Bedside manner [in Korea] does not exist,' said Palermino, who was told she looked 'old' and 'sick' by clinic staff, and was urged to undergo additional procedures that would alter these perceived flaws.
'Go in with a strong mentality about what your goals are,' she advised. 'Don't get bullied into anything you don't want to do.' K-Beauty's Other Face
Medical tourists face other unique challenges to receiving treatment in South Korea, including an ongoing doctor's strike, which began last year after the federal government announced plans to increase medical student admissions. Intended to address the country's rapidly aging population, the move angered physicians who grew concerned about how the sharp influx of students would affect the quality of Korea's medical education, and who felt slighted by what they saw as an ineffective solution to endemic issues in certain practice areas like low pay and labour exploitation.
Earlier this year, a content creator lost vision in one eye after receiving facial injections of Juvelook Volume at a clinic in Seoul. In a now-deleted video, she recounted how she wasn't able to receive immediate emergency care as a direct repercussion of labour constraints imposed by the strike.
Foreign patients have also run afoul of the country's strict anti-defamation laws. Under the Information and Communications Network Act, one-star reviews and negative experiences shared on social media can be considered forms of cyber defamation, regardless of whether or not the statements are true.
New York-based beauty influencer Grace Yoon found herself in an ongoing legal dispute with a popular Seoul-based skincare clinic last December after posting a TikTok in which she described a friend who allegedly lost consciousness immediately after a skin treatment and later discovered two hematomas on her head. The clinic has since attributed the injuries to vasovagal syncope, a nervous reaction that induces a sudden drop in blood pressure and heart rate.
After publishing the video, Yoon said she received multiple lawsuits from the clinic's legal team; the clinic also posted a rebuttal video to its TikTok account, including CCTV footage of Yoon's friend, that contested her claim that the doctor was inattentive and called her video 'misinformation.' Yoon said her legal counsel has requested the full CCTV footage numerous times and never received it.
'It was basically an intimidation tactic,' said Yoon, who told The Business of Beauty she felt 'traumatised' by the episode. 'It opened my eyes a little bit more to why we don't see negative reviews online or truthful reviews about these skincare clinics.' She encourages tourists to travel with someone who understands the language and culture.
Most physicians recommend that patients seek treatment as close to home as possible, even within countries like the US, where regulations and certifications vary from state to state.
Still, understanding that anybody will travel for a deal, dermatologists like Angelo Landriscina, based in New York, caution against getting treatments at 'factory clinics,' or large, sometimes franchise-based clinics that prioritise high output to offset extremely cheap costs.
A surgical treatment like a nose job is not a lunch break occurrence, though it may seem like one on Plastic Surgery Street.
'Sometimes people treat these injectables like going to get their hair dyed now, when really it's a medical procedure,' said Landriscina.
Though accidents in Korea's aesthetic industry are rare, patients should understand the risks associated with their procedures.
'[Korea is] like anywhere in the world,' Palermino said. 'There's going to be great places to go. There's going to be places that, you know, sound great, but might not be.'
Still, Himedi's Ban believes South Korea's cosmetic tourism boom is sustainable and scalable. Chen agrees, and doesn't see the social media hype dying down any time soon.
'There are always so many new things that are coming out, so many new innovations, new treatments,' she said. 'People just want to know, 'What's the latest and greatest? If I were to travel to Korea tomorrow, what should I be getting?''
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