Coming to Korea for treatment

Visitors from most of the five markets this site serves enter Korea visa-free for a short stay or with an electronic travel authorisation, which normally covers an outpatient procedure and its follow-up visit. A separate medical visa category exists for longer treatment and for a companion travelling with a patient; it is applied for through a clinic registered to invite foreign patients, so ask the clinic before you buy tickets. Entry rules change without much notice — confirm them against the Korean government source for your nationality, not against an aggregator, this one included.

Some pages show how many days after a procedure patients typically waited before flying. That figure summarises the records we hold; it is not clearance to board. Cabin pressure, swelling, bleeding risk and whatever medication you are on all bear on it, and the only person who can judge your case is the doctor who performed the procedure. Book a return flight you are able to move.

Clinic pages list the languages a clinic states it supports, and we separately count how many reviews were written in each language — which tells you whether patients in your language actually go there, rather than only that a page has been translated. Before you commit, ask three things: is the interpreter a staff member or booked in from outside, will they be present when you sign the consent form, and who do you contact in your own language after you fly home. Consent given through an interpreter you first met in the treatment room is not the same as consent you understood.

Nothing on this page is medical, legal or immigration advice, and this site has no physician reviewer. We describe what the records contain and what other patients did; whether any of it applies to you is a question for a doctor who has examined you and for the relevant authority in your country. If a clinic or an agent tells you something a government source contradicts, believe the government source.