Busan's Medical Tourism Festival Opens October 16 — Check Agency Registration Before You Book
If you're planning a trip to Korea partly to get some skin care or a simple procedure done, it's worth adding the medical tourism festival in Busan to your itinerary. Since it's a public event jointly hosted by the local government and university hospitals rather than hospital marketing, you can receive consultations and try out experiences without pressure.
At a glance: Event name 5th Busan Seo-gu Medical Tourism Festival · Dates October 16-17 · Location around Songdo Ocean Park, Seo-gu, Busan · Organizers Busan Seo-gu, Pusan National University Hospital, Dong-A University Hospital, Kosin University Gospel Hospital and others · Search for registered facilities medicalkorea.or.kr/korp
The festival is held to mark Busan's Seo-gu district being designated the first "medical tourism special zone" in the Busan-Ulsan-Gyeongnam region, and more than 60 booths offer free experience programs such as health consultations, body-type diagnostics and stress testing. A health talk concert featuring plastic surgery specialists is also held as a side event, so visitors considering a procedure can pick up information naturally at the festival grounds.
The check that really matters before your trip, though, takes place outside the festival grounds. Hospitals or agencies seeking to attract foreign patients in Korea must be formally registered with the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and attracting foreign patients without registration is subject to punishment. Before receiving a consultation, you can search the hospital or agency's name on KHIDI's "Foreign Patient Attraction Information System" (medicalkorea.or.kr/korp) to check directly whether it is officially registered.
Checking registration status is especially useful when you've been approached for a consultation through social media ads or a local broker. Officially registered institutions offer recourse through a government-run consultation channel if a dispute arises, but procedures carried out through unregistered channels are far harder to seek redress for if problems occur. Even if you picked up good information at the festival, going through this lookup process once before actually booking a procedure is the surest way for visitors to Korea to protect themselves.