Category: Before You Go

2 primary sources checked1 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

Reviews are the main thing most people actually use to pick a clinic, which makes it worth knowing exactly how staged reviews have gotten caught in Korea — because a few of them have, and the pattern that got exposed tells you more than a general warning would.

What’s actually been caught

In July 2026, Korea’s Fair Trade Commission issued corrective orders against three plastic surgery clinics for a specific scheme: recruiting patients as unofficial “promotional models” in exchange for discounted procedures, then directing them — over messaging apps — to write reviews of a specified length, include before-and-after photos, and keep posting once a month for a year, with some patients required to put down a refundable deposit as security for compliance. The legal finding was precise: even when the patient’s underlying experience was genuine, a review written under paid or incentivized direction, without disclosing that arrangement, counts as deceptive advertising under Korea’s Act on Fair Labeling and Advertising.

That wasn’t an isolated finding. A 2024 monitoring sweep by Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare reviewed 409 pieces of online medical advertising content and found 366 in violation of some kind — the single largest category being posts disguised as a spontaneous patient review that were actually a directed promotional post, accounting for 188 of the violations on their own.

Why “isn’t this illegal” doesn’t close the gap

Korea’s Medical Act provision on deceptive advertising (Article 56, Paragraph 2, Item 2) applies specifically to medical professionals and institutions — not to patients, and not to the platforms hosting their reviews. That’s a narrower target than it sounds: a review a patient posts, even one arranged and directed by a clinic, isn’t something the platform or the reviewer is directly liable for under that provision — the clinic is. And Korea’s medical-advertising pre-screening system, which normally has to clear promotional content before it runs, doesn’t apply to reviews users post on their own inside an app in the first place. That’s the actual shape of the regulatory gap: enforcement exists, but it’s built to catch the clinic side of a staged campaign, not to screen the reviews themselves before they’re visible.

What the review data itself tends to look like

Genuine patient reviews, in the corpus this site has read for other pieces, tend to cluster around a handful of details — cleanliness, staff friendliness, wait times — and are conspicuously thin on the details that actually matter for judging outcome: how long results lasted, what the consent process covered, whether anesthesia was discussed, what a refund would have looked like. A review pattern that’s heavy on atmosphere and light on every outcome-specific detail isn’t proof of anything on its own, but it’s the same shape the confirmed staged-review cases took: written to satisfy a posting requirement, not to inform the next patient.

Signals worth actually checking

• The reviewer’s own rating history. Naver began publicly showing each reviewer’s average star rating as of July 9, 2026 — a reviewer whose account is nothing but 5-star ratings across every business they’ve reviewed is a visible, checkable pattern now, not a guess.
• A cluster of reviews landing in a short window. A burst of similar-sounding reviews posted close together in time is one of the most consistent signals in the academic literature on manipulated reviews — genuine reviews arrive at a more irregular pace.
• Accounts with exactly one review. A reviewer with a single review, ever, posted for one business, is a recognized red flag in review-fraud research — it’s the profile of an account created specifically to post that one review.
• An unusually narrow spread of ratings. Independent research on incentivized and forced reviews has found their average lands lower than naturally occurring reviews once you strip out the campaign period — a business whose reviews are almost entirely 5-star with nothing in the middle is worth cross-checking elsewhere rather than taking at face value.

What this means when you’re actually reading reviews

Cross-check the same clinic across more than one platform rather than trusting a single source — a pattern that shows up on Google Maps but not on a Korean review app (or vice versa) is itself informative. If a clinic’s reviews are overwhelmingly about how nice the waiting room was and say almost nothing about how the treatment actually went, weight that gap accordingly. And a complete absence of any negative reviews isn’t necessarily a good sign — platforms process real complaints and requests to remove reviews regularly, so a spotless record can mean genuine consistency, or it can mean something is being filtered before you see it.

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Details on the July 2026 Fair Trade Commission corrective orders and the 2024 Ministry of Health and Welfare monitoring results are drawn from official Korean government announcements and cross-checked against independent Korean news reporting. The regulatory-gap analysis is based on the text of the Medical Act’s advertising provisions. Review-manipulation signal research is drawn from published academic work on review fraud detection, including studies on singleton reviewers, temporal review bursts, and rating distortion under incentivized posting.

2 primary sources checkedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

A question that quietly follows a lot of treatment plans: if this takes longer than expected, or if I book a package that runs across several visits, am I even allowed to stay that long? Korea’s answer is that there isn’t one visa for foreign patients — there are two, and which one applies depends less on what procedure you’re having than on how long the whole plan actually takes.

The two tracks

South Korea’s Korea Tourism Organization lists two visa categories built specifically for foreign patients: the C-3-3 short-term visa, for stays of 90 days or less, and the G-1-10 long-term treatment visa, for stays of up to one year. Both are open to the patient and to an accompanying family member or caregiver, not just the person being treated.

What actually decides which one you need

The deciding factor isn’t the category of procedure — it’s the total length of your treatment and recovery plan. A single-visit procedure with a short recovery window generally fits inside the C-3-3’s 90-day cap. A plan that spans multiple sessions over months, or that requires an extended recovery period before you’re cleared to fly, is what the G-1-10 exists for.

Why the requirements aren’t the same for everyone

Here’s the part that trips people up: the Korea Tourism Organization’s own guidance states directly that “visa requirements and the types of required documents may vary depending on the nationalities of patients and the lengths of their stay.” There isn’t a single universal checklist. Applicants from K-ETA-eligible countries may be able to use the K-ETA system instead of a traditional visa application for shorter stays, while others apply through a Korean embassy or consulate or through the electronic visa portal. Korea also runs a dedicated Medical Tourism Business Center (reachable at +82-1345) specifically for these questions — a real point of contact rather than guesswork.

What this means if you’re planning treatment

• Get the full timeline in writing. Not just the procedure date — the entire window including follow-up visits and recovery before you’re cleared to travel home.
• Don’t assume the short-term visa covers you. If the window could realistically stretch past 90 days, ask the clinic and your nearest Korean embassy or consulate directly whether the G-1-10 applies.
• Treat another patient’s visa experience as a data point, not a template. Requirements genuinely differ by nationality — assuming your country’s process matches someone else’s is the fastest way to a wrong answer here.

If your stay is short enough that neither medical visa applies, the entry paperwork still does. Our sister site covers what visa-exempt visitors are asked for at the border: K-ETA Exempt? You Still Have to File the Arrival Card.

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Visa category names, duration limits, and eligibility details are drawn from the Korea Tourism Organization’s official medical visa guidance and the Republic of Korea’s overseas embassy visa information pages.

1 primary source checked1 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

A quieter worry than “will the treatment work” is “will I actually understand what’s being said to me.” Consultations, consent forms, aftercare instructions — all of it usually passes through a staff member doing double duty as interpreter, and there’s rarely any way to tell, in the room, whether that person is qualified to carry medical detail across a language gap or is just the person on shift who happens to speak some English. There’s a specific, checkable credential behind that role too, and almost nobody asks about it.

The certification that exists

Since 2016, the Korea Human Resource Development Institute for Health and Welfare (한국보건복지인재원), a training body designated by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, has administered an annual Medical Interpretation Proficiency Examination (의료통역능력 검정시험) across seven languages: English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Mongolian, and Vietnamese.

The exam runs in two stages. The written portion covers four subjects in multiple-choice format: international culture, medical services, hospital systems, and basic medicine. The oral portion that follows tests the accuracy and logical clarity of a candidate’s foreign-language expression alongside their medical knowledge — closer to a live interpreting test than a vocabulary check. There’s no prerequisite to sit for it; any Korean or foreign national who wants to verify their ability can apply.

What it’s not

Nothing in Korean law requires a clinic to staff its consultations with someone who holds this certification. A clinic is free to have any employee interpret — a coordinator, a receptionist, a general staff member with conversational language skills — regardless of whether they’ve ever sat for this exam. The credential exists and is government-run, but it functions the same way the International Medical Tourism Coordinator certification does: a real, rigorous, voluntary qualification, not a floor that everyone in the room has cleared.

What this means in the consultation room

If precise communication matters to you — and for anything involving consent, medication, or aftercare instructions, it should — asking directly whether your interpreter holds the 의료통역능력 검정시험 certification is a concrete question with a checkable answer, not a matter of taking a job title at face value. A few things worth doing regardless of the answer:

• Get it in writing. Anything involving dosage, aftercare steps, or complication warning signs — ask for it written down, not just spoken.
• Ask for a rephrase, not a nod. If a term or explanation feels unclear, say so directly rather than letting it pass.
• Keep a summary you can reread. For procedures with real recovery instructions, a written summary matters more afterward than how fluent the conversation felt in the moment.

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Details on the Medical Interpretation Proficiency Examination’s administering body, subject structure, and language offerings are drawn from the Korea Human Resource Development Institute for Health and Welfare’s official exam portal and contemporaneous Korean press coverage of the exam’s administration.

1 primary source checked1 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

Most foreign patients at a Korean skin clinic deal with a coordinator, not the treating physician, for most of the visit — booking, translation, explaining the treatment plan, sometimes even sitting in during consultation. What that person’s actual qualifications are is rarely made obvious, and there’s a specific, checkable credential behind the role that most patients never hear about: the International Medical Tourism Coordinator certification, a government national technical qualification jointly overseen by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, administered by the Human Resources Development Service of Korea (Q-Net).

What it actually takes to get the license

The certification isn’t a short in-house training course. It’s a two-stage national exam: a written test covering five subjects — 100 multiple-choice questions in 2.5 hours, requiring at least 40 points in every individual subject and a 60-point average overall — followed by a separate practical exam scored out of 100, in essay format. Both stages are run twice a year alongside Korea’s other national technical qualification exams. Eligibility isn’t open to anyone either: candidates need a minimum TOEIC score of 700, plus either a relevant university degree or around four years of direct experience in healthcare or tourism work. People who are already licensed physicians, nurses, or tour guides qualify to sit the exam automatically.

What it’s not

Holding this certification is not a legal requirement to work as a patient coordinator at a Korean clinic. Nothing in Korean law requires the person walking you through your treatment plan, translating your consultation, or managing your booking to have passed this exam — clinics are free to hire and title staff as “coordinators” with no credential at all. The certification exists, and it’s genuinely rigorous to pass, but it functions as a voluntary professional qualification rather than a licensing floor for the role.

What this means for you

A coordinator holding the International Medical Tourism Coordinator certification has demonstrably passed a government-administered exam covering healthcare systems, tourism logistics, and language proficiency at a verified level — that’s a real, checkable signal. Not holding it doesn’t mean a coordinator is unqualified; plenty of experienced staff never sit the exam. But if trust in the person managing your care is something you want more than a job title to go on, asking directly whether they hold this specific national certification — by its Korean name, 국제의료관광코디네이터 — is a concrete question with a verifiable answer, rather than a matter of taking a clinic’s word for it.

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Details on the certification’s administration, exam structure, and eligibility requirements are drawn from Q-Net, the Human Resources Development Service of Korea’s official national certification portal, cross-checked against independent summaries from Korean university health-administration program pages.

2 primary sources checkedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

South Korea has no general legal requirement for medical clinics to carry malpractice or liability insurance. A clinic can operate, and treat domestic patients, without one. That surprises most foreign visitors, who tend to assume insurance coverage is a baseline of running any medical business — it isn’t, here.

There is one category of clinic where insurance is mandatory: institutions formally registered to treat foreign patients.

The one legal requirement that applies to you

Under the Act on Support for Overseas Expansion of Medical System and Attraction of International Patients — the law governing Korea’s foreign-patient industry — a medical institution seeking to legally treat and bill foreign patients must register with the government, and registration comes with conditions. The clinic must have at least one specialist physician on staff in the relevant department, and it must carry medical malpractice liability insurance with coverage of at least 100 million won for clinics and hospitals, or 200 million won for general hospitals — with foreign patients explicitly included in the policy’s coverage. This requirement took effect June 23, 2017, following a one-year grace period after the law’s passage.

In practice, this means the “registered foreign-patient institution” status isn’t just paperwork — it’s the only reliable signal, short of asking a clinic directly and trusting the answer, that liability insurance covering you as a foreign patient actually exists.

How to check before you book

The government runs a public lookup system for this exact purpose: the Medical Korea international patient portal (medicalkorea.or.kr), operated by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. It offers two ways to search — by the clinic’s business registration number, or by institution name with filters for region and status. A clinic that markets itself to international patients but doesn’t appear in this registry isn’t necessarily unsafe, but it does mean the insurance requirement described above doesn’t legally apply to it.

This is worth checking before you commit to a clinic, not after. Ask for the clinic’s business registration number as part of your initial inquiry — a legitimate, registered clinic will hand it over without hesitation — and run it through the portal yourself.

What this doesn’t tell you

Registration confirms a minimum insurance floor and at least one specialist on staff. It does not verify who will actually perform your procedure, what a policy pays out in practice, or whether the clinic has a history of disputes. It’s one data point, not a full background check — but it’s a free one, backed by a public registry, and most tourists never think to look.

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This article describes a legal requirement and a public verification tool; it does not evaluate or rank individual clinics. Readers should confirm current details directly with the Medical Korea portal, as registries are updated periodically.

Sources: Act on Support for Overseas Expansion of Medical System and Attraction of International Patients, Article 6 — registration of medical institutions attracting foreign patients requires at least one specialist physician per relevant department under Article 77 of the Medical Service Act, and enrolment in medical malpractice liability insurance prescribed by Ministry of Health and Welfare ordinance or in the medical indemnity mutual aid association under the Act on Remedies for Injuries from Medical Malpractice and Mediation of Medical Disputes; registration is valid for three years. Registration status is searchable on the Ministry-operated Medical Korea portal. Statutory text confirmed 12 August 2026.

2 primary sources checked1 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

For nine years, a foreign patient who had skin resurfacing, a wrinkle treatment, double-eyelid surgery, fat-dissolving injections, or breast augmentation in South Korea could file for a 10 percent VAT refund on the procedure. As of January 1, 2026, that refund no longer exists — and the bill written to bring it back is currently sitting in a National Assembly subcommittee with no passage date attached.

What actually changed

The refund was introduced in 2016 to help draw foreign patients into Korea’s cosmetic and dermatology market. The National Assembly passed a Restriction of Special Taxation Act amendment removing the provision, and the special refund period ended December 31, 2025. There was no extension in the government’s 2026 tax reform package.

The scale of what disappeared is documented in the government’s own figures. Foreign medical tourism spending reached 1.24 trillion won in 2024 — roughly three times the 2019 level — with cosmetic surgery and dermatology accounting for 77.3 percent of that total. The refund program itself paid out a record 9.55 billion won in 2024, and 8.26 billion won in the first half of 2025 alone, shortly before it ended.

The bill that’s trying to reverse it

In April 2026, Rep. Jo Gye-won and 11 co-sponsors introduced an amendment to reinstate the refund, proposing to extend the special provision through December 31, 2027. The bill was referred to the tax and fiscal policy subcommittee on July 29, 2026. As of this writing, it has not been passed, and no date for a vote has been set.

The sponsors’ stated rationale is that ending the refund weakened Korea’s price competitiveness in the global medical tourism market and reduced the incentive to attract foreign patients. Industry groups have pushed the same argument publicly, warning of price competitiveness loss, reduced pricing transparency, and patients shifting to competing destinations.

What this means if you’re booking now

If you’re researching or booking treatment in Korea in 2026, the 10 percent refund that older guides, forum posts, and clinic marketing may still reference is not currently available. Clinics that continue to advertise “VAT refund” promotions may be referring to a separate, unrelated discount, or to a refund structure that no longer applies to the procedures it used to cover — worth confirming directly, in writing, before you assume a discount applies to your quote.

Whether the refund returns depends on a bill that, as of August 2026, is still in committee. There’s no reliable timeline for a vote, and no guarantee the current draft — extension through the end of 2027 — is what eventually passes, if anything does.

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Figures and dates in this article are drawn from Korean government tax data and National Assembly bill records, cross-checked across multiple independent news reports. This article will be updated if the bill’s status changes.

2 primary sources checkedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

We read 122 English-language reviews of eight Seoul skin and aesthetic clinics. Not one of them said how long the result lasted. Not one mentioned a consent form. Not one mentioned anaesthesia, a refund, or the doctor’s specialty. What these reviews leave out is more informative than what they contain — and there is a documented reason for it.

This is the first in a series in which we treat clinic reviews as data rather than as opinion. We do not host reviews and we do not rank clinics. We count what is there, we count what is not, and we publish the base every time.

What we did

On 7 August 2026 we collected every English-language review visible to us on Google Maps for eight clinics in Gangnam, Apgujeong and Hongdae, taking both the default sort order and the lowest-rating sort order. That produced 122 reviews: 52 at five stars, 13 at four, three at three, one at two, and 53 at one.

It is not a random sample and we will not pretend otherwise. Google stops paginating after roughly eight to ten reviews per sort order — one clinic in our set displays 1,506 reviews and showed us eight. Of the 122 we did read, 102 were truncated by Google at around 240 characters, so anything mentioned in the tail of a review is invisible to us. Every count below is a floor, not a measurement.

What was missing

What we looked for	Reviews mentioning it
How long the result lasted	0
A consent form or any paperwork	0
Anaesthesia	0
A prepaid package or course of treatments	0
A refund, or compensation of any kind	0
The doctor’s board certification or specialty	0
Legal recourse, insurance, or a complaint body	0
Aftercare or a follow-up visit	1
A written quote before payment	1
An actual price in Korean won	2

The zeros are the finding. Lifting, fillers and botulinum toxin were the procedures most often named in this corpus, and all three are bought on the promise of a duration. Not one reviewer said whether they got it.

What was there instead

If reviewers were not describing outcomes, what were they describing? We classified the 65 positive reviews the same way.

What the positive reviews praised	Count of 65
The premises — cleanliness, decor, “luxury” feel	29
Staff warmth and friendliness	20
A clear explanation of the procedure	11
A named individual member of staff	11
Satisfaction with the result	8
Transparent pricing	6
An interpreter or English-speaking staff	3
Not being pushed to buy more	2

Twenty-nine reviewers praised the room. Eight praised the outcome. Complications appear four times in the negative reviews and never once in the positive ones, which is what you would expect if the positive reviews were written before any complication could have appeared.

The axis of evaluation has moved. These are not reviews of medical care. They are reviews of an afternoon.

“They didn’t push me” is a compliment

Thirteen of the 57 negative reviews describe being sold additional treatments — in two cases, being moved into a treatment room without being told what was about to happen. Against that, two positive reviews single out the absence of selling as the thing worth writing down.

They did not try to upsell me at all, just listened to my needs and recommended the best…

Google review, Reberry Gangnam, 5 stars, July 2026

The pricing is honest and transparent — no hidden fees or pushy upsells.

Google review, Cellin Hongdae, 5 stars, April 2026

A market in which not being sold to is remarkable enough to record is a market in which being sold to is the default.

Who does the selling is its own finding. Across the corpus, the person conducting the consultation is called a consultant, a counsellor, a receptionist, a “foreign manager” or, flatly, “sales people”. Only two reviews state how long the patient spent with a doctor.

I spent over two hours with counselor but I had maximum three minutes with Dr. Lee.

Google review, Banobagi, 1 star

To start with I had only 5 min consultation then they rushed me out to serve next person.

Google review, ID Hospital, 1 star

Why the reviews stop at the door

Two reviews, written by different people about different clinics, describe the same mechanism.

They give you free gifts in exchange for a 5 star review. They ask you to post it during the consultation. Then they check the review before giving your gift. So beware the ratings may be inflated.

Google review, MUSE Gangnam, 1 star, June 2026

The high review you see here is because they ask you to gove a five star review before you leave, so you get a gift. You have to show that you have a five star review and that you posted it.

Google review, Reberry Gangnam, 1 star, July 2026

Neither is a copy of the other. The phrasing differs, the spelling differs, and one contains a typo the other does not. Both describe the same four steps: the request arrives during or before the procedure, the rating is specified, the posting is verified, and only then is the gift handed over.

If a review is written inside the clinic on the day of treatment, it can only ever describe that day. That is the entire explanation for the first table in this article. There is no duration in these reviews because there was no duration yet.

A regulator has already documented this

Two reviews are two reviews. But in July 2026 Korea’s Fair Trade Commission issued corrective orders against three Seoul plastic-surgery clinics for the same practice, and the published account of the case describes the mechanics in more detail than any patient could.

The clinics recruited patients as promotional models through their own websites, discounted the surgery in exchange, and then sent instructions by messenger: a specified minimum character count, before-and-after photographs required, and a post once a month for a year after surgery. At least one required a deposit of 500,000 won, returned on compliance.

The finding worth carrying is not the sanction. It is the principle. A review written by a real patient about a real operation is still deceptive advertising if it was compensated and the compensation was not disclosed. Authenticity is not the test. Disclosure is.

No fine was imposed — the outcome was a corrective order. For comparison, the equivalent United States rule, in force since October 2024, carries a maximum civil penalty above fifty thousand dollars per violation.

The only two prices in 122 reviews

Exactly two reviews in the corpus contain a figure in Korean won. One of them is a four-star review, and the reviewer is not complaining.

The price in store was 88,000 won if you bring your Korean ARC card. If you don’t have one they’ll charge you 97,000.

Google review, MUSE Gangnam, 4 stars, June 2026

An alien registration card is what a foreign resident of Korea carries. A visitor does not have one. The reviewer records a ten per cent difference in the same tone she uses for the rest of the visit — as a fact about the day, not as a grievance. That is the corpus in miniature: things are recorded, not evaluated.

The second figure comes from a one-star review and puts the gap far higher.

If you call a Korean call center they will tell you a completely different price it will be at least 30% cheaper than their foreign manager tells you, so be careful

Google review, VIEW Plastic Surgery, 1 star

The two figures do not agree with each other, and we are not going to pretend that two reviews establish a pattern. What we can say is that we could find no systematic measurement of what foreign patients are quoted at Korean clinics — not by a regulator, not by a researcher, not by anyone. An entire industry has been built on English-language search without that number ever being published.

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What this does not prove

• It does not establish that any particular clinic solicited reviews. It establishes that two patients say they were asked to, and that a regulator found three other clinics doing it.
• It does not tell us what proportion of reviews are produced this way. Google shows eight per sort order; we cannot see the rest.
• A five-star-heavy distribution is not by itself evidence of manipulation. Naturally occurring review distributions are already skewed, and self-selection alone produces skew. We treat that signal as weak and will deal with it properly in a separate article.
• Silence is not the same as absence. A reviewer who does not mention a consent form may well have signed one.

What we could not confirm

• Korean-language reviews. Naver Place, KakaoMap, Gangnam Unni and Babitalk were all unreachable to us. Everything above describes the English-language corpus only, and the comparison with Korean patients that we plan for a later article rests on a much smaller community sample.
• The Fair Trade Commission decision itself. We worked from published accounts of the case, not the decision document. Reported dates for the announcement differ by a few days across outlets, which is why we date it only to July 2026.
• Whether complaints skew towards English. At one clinic, the ten lowest-rated reviews were all in English. That is suggestive and nothing more; we did not read the Korean reviews.
• Whether foreign patients are systematically quoted more. Two reviews in this corpus mention a gap and disagree about its size — ten per cent in one, thirty in the other. Two data points are not a finding, and we could locate no study that measures it.

Check a clinic yourself

Every signal used in this article can be checked by a reader in about two minutes: count the star breakdown you can actually see, open ten reviews and count how many come from accounts with a single review, and note whether you were offered anything in exchange for posting. We built a page that does the arithmetic and shows you what each signal is worth and where it comes from. It runs in your browser and stores nothing.

One thing has become easier very recently. Since 9 July 2026, Naver publishes each reviewer’s own average star rating — so an account whose every review is five stars is now visible to anyone looking.

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Collected and verified 7 August 2026. Figures are counts of what we read, not estimates. If you find an error in this article, write to [email protected] with the specific claim and we will correct it on this page with the date and a note describing what changed.