Mexican Maria Zu first visited Seoul eight years ago to tour cafes and parks in the South Korean capital, but spent a key part of her latest trip in April in skincare clinics under the gaze of doctors wielding laser wands and injection needles.
“We feel safe coming to this country for our faces,” said the Dubai-based consultant, one of millions of beauty enthusiasts boosting South Korea’s tourism numbers and economy as they throng its thousands of skincare clinics.
These days tourists like Zu seek treatments, including red light therapy, Botox to smooth out wrinkles and ultrasound “skin lifting” to tighten jawlines, not only the nose jobs and double eyelid surgery of earlier years.
“The growth of foreign patients is outpacing that of foreign tourists,” said Hong Seung-wook, director of global healthcare business at the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. His department is tasked by the country’s health ministry to attract foreign patients.
Growing ‘glow-up’ trend
More than 2-million foreigners visited South Korea last year for medical treatment, nearly double the 2024 figure of 1.17-million, the health ministry said in April.
“We see foreign tourists spend more on medical services than on tourism in Korea,” said Hong, adding health authorities hoped to keep up the momentum by promoting services such as anti-ageing treatments to middle-aged visitors.
Zu, a former flight attendant who has visited South Korea at least six times, said she tended to pack several non-invasive treatments into a single trip.
That is a growing trend exemplified by hashtags such as “#koreaglowup”, popular among users of social media such as Instagram.
The major attractions are cost and South Korean expertise in beauty techniques that enable it to offer technologies and techniques often years ahead of those in the West.
Several visitors told Reuters skincare treatments in South Korea could be as much as a fifth cheaper than those at home, while communication was not a problem as many clinics employed multilingual co-ordinators.
“I like that there is a variety of K-beauty treatments in general that are not even offered in the US,” said Cindy Gu, a 30-year-old social media video editor from the US.
She was waiting to undergo a facial lifting treatment at Lienjang, a beauty clinic in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam district.
‘Doing a great job’
Competition is the key to affordability, said Se-rin Lee, director of Lienjang’s aesthetic dermatology department, as there are so many beauty clinics in South Korea.
“The competition is pushing down the prices of services,” she said, adding Lienjang’s foreign patients averaged about 100 a day, each with an average spend of about 1.5-million won (R16,145).
About 15,000 clinics offer skincare treatments, mostly run by general practitioners rather than dermatologists, the Association of Korean Dermatologists said.
“Korea is doing a really great job in many areas, not only in skincare,” said Zu, adding she was working on a project to deliver experiences for travellers to Korea and connect the country with the world. “My dream is to live here.”
Reuters
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