euronews focus – Taking the pulse of medical tourism in of South Korea

www.euronews.com South Korea has been making a huge effort over the past few years to develop medical tourism as one of its new growth industries. To make life easier for foreign visitors, information centres have been set up to offer advice and guidance to a growing number of foreign patients (mainly from Japan, China and Russia), who come to South Korea in search of all manner of medicinal marvels. “We help about 60 foreign patients per day, which means that there were more than 12000 in our first year of business. They ask for very diverse treatments, from cosmetic surgery to traditional medicine,” explains Ki Rip Park, from a Medical Tourism Information Centre in Busan. In Seoul, business at the Jaseng Hospital of Eastern Medicine is booming. It specialises in non-surgical spine treatments and has an international clinic to accommodate its foreign patients, with translators on hand to help out. Naoko, from Japan, suffers from severe back pain and has become a regular here. She gets Chuna therapy, as well as a mixture of electric stimulation acupuncture and herbal medication. Naoko Kawaragi, a medical tourist told euronews: “Sometimes I cannot walk, I cannot stand, I cannot stretch. I started coming here two years ago. Now I come here every three months and I stay for three days. Before I couldn’t even walk.” Treatments combine old and new – East and West – a medical fusion that allows new treatments to develop, attracting an increasing number of Westerners along the …
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