Category: Law & Rights

6 primary sources checkedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

Six weeks after a filler appointment in Gangnam, a swelling appears. The doctor in front of you — in London, in Bangkok, in Los Angeles — asks a reasonable question: what was injected, how much of it, and when?

Most people who fly to Korea for skin treatment cannot answer. They have a card receipt, a folded price list, maybe a KakaoTalk thread with a coordinator. What they do not have is the clinical record.

The clinic does. And under Korean law, that record is not the clinic’s private property. It is yours to request — from anywhere in the world, at a price the government has capped.

What the law says

Article 21 of the Medical Service Act (의료법 제21조) gives a patient the right to inspect their own records or to receive copies of them. The wording matters: a doctor or medical institution may not refuse the request, or drag it out, without a legitimate reason.

There is no nationality clause. The right attaches to the patient, not to a Korean resident registration number. A foreign patient asking for their own record stands in exactly the same position as a Korean one.

Identification is what the clinic is entitled to check. Hospitals list the acceptable documents the same way — a resident registration card, a passport, a driver’s license, or another government-issued ID. Chungnam National University Hospital’s public guidance names the passport explicitly.

If someone else collects the record for you, the bar rises: under Enforcement Rule Article 13-3, a proxy needs their own ID, a consent form and power of attorney signed by the patient in their own hand, and a copy of the patient’s ID.

What is actually in the record

Enforcement Rule Article 14 sets out what a treatment record must contain:

• the patient’s personal details
• the chief complaint (and, where needed, medical and family history)
• the diagnosis or diagnostic result
• the clinical course, where it changed at follow-up
• the treatment given — injections, medications, procedures
• the date and time of treatment

That fifth line is the one worth flying home with. “Injections, medications, procedures” is the statutory category that covers what went into your face.

Note the limit honestly: the rule requires the content of treatment. It does not spell out that the record must name a filler’s brand, its lot number, or the exact unit count of a neurotoxin. How specific your record is depends on how the clinician wrote it. Which is an argument for asking at the counter, on the day, rather than by email a year later — ask that the product name and the dose be written into the record itself.

You do not have to be standing in Korea

This is the part almost nobody tells visiting patients.

In October 2019, the Ministry of Health and Welfare issued a working guideline on inspecting and copying treatment records (진료기록 열람 및 사본발급 업무 지침, published 16 October 2019, Medical Institution Policy Division). It confirms that records may be sent by post, by fax, or by email, and may be supplied as paper printouts or on electronic media such as a USB stick or CD. Identity can be confirmed with an ID shown in person, a phone photograph of the ID, or online identity verification where the institution has such a system.

The guideline also grants small clinics an out: an institution without an online verification system may keep to its existing in-person method. So email delivery is permitted — it is not automatically guaranteed. The practical consequence is that this is a question to settle with the clinic while you are still in Seoul, not after you have landed.

What it can cost

Since 2017, certificate fees at Korean medical institutions have been capped by ministerial notice (보건복지부 고시 제2017-166호, effective 21 September 2017). Institutions set their own prices below the ceiling and must post them where patients can see them.

Item	Ceiling
Copy of treatment record, pages 1–5	₩1,000 per page
Copy of treatment record, page 6 onward	₩100 per page
Imaging record on CD	₩10,000
Imaging record on DVD	₩20,000
General medical certificate	₩20,000
General medical certificate, English	₩20,000
Treatment confirmation letter	₩3,000

Seoul National University Hospital and Chungnam National University Hospital both publish the per-page figures at exactly ₩1,000 and ₩100, which is what a working ceiling looks like in practice.

A twelve-page record, then, has a lawful maximum of ₩5,700 — under five US dollars at mid-2026 rates.

An unpaid bill is not a legitimate reason

The 2019 guideline is blunt about this: payment of treatment costs is not a condition of getting a copy of the record. A clinic cannot hold your chart hostage over an outstanding balance.

How long the clinic has to keep it

Enforcement Rule Article 15 fixes minimum retention periods:

Record	Retention
Treatment record (진료기록부)	10 years
Surgical record	10 years
Test results and findings	5 years
Radiological images and reports	5 years
Nursing record	5 years
Patient register	5 years
Prescription	2 years
Duplicate of certificates issued	3 years

Ten years is a long runway. Two years, for prescriptions, is not — if you want the record of what you were prescribed to take home, that is the clock that runs out first.

If a clinic refuses

Refusing or delaying without legitimate reason exposes the institution to a corrective order and a fine of up to ₩5,000,000. The route patients are generally advised to take is a complaint to the district public health center (보건소) with jurisdiction over the clinic, or through the government’s e-People (국민신문고) portal. Bring the dated request you made and the clinic’s response.

What we could not confirm

• English translation is not covered. The fee notice caps an English general medical certificate at ₩20,000, but we found no provision requiring a clinic to translate the treatment record itself. Assume translation is a private arrangement, priced at the clinic’s discretion.
• The fee notice has been amended since 2017 (notices 2019-323 and 2021-34 exist). We were unable to read the amending texts verbatim; the amounts above match what public hospitals currently publish, checked 12 August 2026.
• We did not verify a statutory deadline for issuing copies. Some sources cite a fixed number of days; we found no provision in Article 21 setting one, so we make no claim here.

The checklist

Before you leave the clinic

1. Ask for a copy of the 진료기록 (treatment record) — not just the receipt or the aftercare leaflet. They are different documents.
2. Ask that the product name and the dose be written into the record, not only the procedure name.
3. Ask whether the clinic can send records by email later, and get the address of the person who handles it.
4. Photograph your passport page with the clinic staff present if they need it on file.

After you are home

5. Put the request in writing, in one message: your full name as it appears on your passport, date of birth, treatment date, the clinic’s name, and the words “copy of my treatment record under Article 21 of the Medical Service Act.” Attach your passport photo page.

Records are one half of the paperwork. If you are carrying prescription medication into Korea for the treatment itself, that has its own procedure, and the official English page for it is out of date. Our sister site: Korea Moved the Medication Permit Online in 2024. Its English Page Still Says Fax.

---

Verified 12 August 2026. Sources: Medical Service Act Article 21; Enforcement Rule of the Medical Service Act Articles 13-3, 14 and 15; Ministry of Health and Welfare Notice 2017-166; Ministry of Health and Welfare, Guideline on Inspection and Copying of Treatment Records (16 October 2019); published patient guidance from Seoul National University Hospital and Chungnam National University Hospital; Korean Hospital Association notice on proxy requests.

The Clinic Notes takes no payment from any clinic and is not a registered patient-attraction business. We do not rank, recommend, or broker appointments.

2 primary sources checked2 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

A legal threat over a negative review is one of the more specific fears foreign patients bring up about posting honestly online after a bad experience in Korea — and it’s not an irrational one. Korean defamation law has a feature most English-speaking readers don’t expect: unlike in the U.S., truth alone is not automatically a defense. A true statement can still, in principle, meet the legal definition of defamation. That’s real, and it’s worth taking seriously. What’s less well known is how these cases have actually gone when a clinic has followed through.

The law that makes this possible

Korea’s Criminal Act allows defamation charges over both false and true statements, and the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection (정보통신망법) sets a separate, heavier penalty specifically for defamation carried out online — which covers reviews on forums, apps, and cafes. On paper, that’s a wide net, and it’s the basis clinics point to when they send a cease-and-desist letter over a review.

But Korean law also builds in a specific exit ramp. Article 310 of the Criminal Act says that when a statement is both true and made solely in the public interest, its unlawfulness is negated — meaning it stops being a punishable act. A consumer review of a medical procedure, written from direct experience and useful to other prospective patients, is close to the textbook example of what that exception exists for.

What’s happened when clinics actually pursued it

In one case, a patient posted about complications from nose surgery on an online plastic-surgery forum, without naming the clinic but including enough identifying detail that it recognized itself. The clinic filed a criminal defamation complaint. The prosecutor issued a non-prosecution decision, declining to charge the patient — accepting the defense argument that the post reflected direct personal experience, served as genuinely useful reference information for other patients researching surgery, and wasn’t primarily written to defame.

In a separate case, a clinic sued in civil court to force the removal of a patient’s negative reviews describing complications from eyelid surgery. The Seoul Central District Court rejected the clinic’s request on April 1, 2022, finding that a factual account of real complications — backed by the patient’s own medical records showing overcorrection — wasn’t defamatory, since it wasn’t written with the primary intent to insult and reflected a genuine consumer experience.

Both outcomes turned on the same two questions: was the account substantially true, and was posting it about something other than just tearing the clinic down. Reviews that cleared those two bars held up. It’s also worth separating this from a different, unrelated legal exposure that sometimes gets confused with it: the criminal conviction of Gangnam Unni’s CEO in 2023 was for patient brokering under a different provision of the Medical Act, not for anything related to reviews — a completely separate legal question with a completely different outcome.

What this means if you’re deciding whether to post

Getting a legal threat letter is a real possibility, and it’s an unpleasant one regardless of how the law eventually sorts out — lawyers who’ve handled these cases are candid that the dispute itself creates stress independent of the legal outcome. But the pattern in the cases that have actually been tested is consistent: a review based on your own experience, focused on what happened rather than on personal insults, and useful to someone else making the same decision, is the kind of speech Korean law has repeatedly protected — even when a clinic pushed hard to have it removed or prosecuted.

What actually held up, specifically

Pulled directly from what made the difference in these cases, not general advice:

• Stick to what happened to you. Both protected reviews described a real complication the reviewer experienced firsthand, not a claim about the clinic’s intentions, competence in general, or anything secondhand.
• Keep the record that backs it up. The eyelid-surgery case turned partly on medical records documenting the overcorrection. Photos, receipts, and any post-op documentation are what let “this happened to me” hold up as true rather than just asserted.
• Naming the clinic isn’t automatically what sinks you. In the nose-surgery case, the post didn’t use the clinic’s name but still included enough detail that the clinic identified itself — and the reviewer still wasn’t charged. What mattered was truth and purpose, not anonymity.
• Write toward other patients, not just at the clinic. Both cases turned on the review reading as useful reference information for someone else researching the same procedure — not as a message aimed purely at hurting the clinic. Framing that includes what you’d tell someone considering the same treatment does real legal work here, not just readability work.
• A legal threat is not the same as a case that goes anywhere. In the nose-surgery example, a filed criminal complaint still ended in non-prosecution. A cease-and-desist letter is a pressure tactic, not a verdict — getting one doesn’t mean the law is actually on the clinic’s side.

---

Case details are drawn from Korean legal-news reporting on the April 2022 Seoul Central District Court ruling and a separate prosecutorial non-prosecution decision in a plastic-surgery review defamation complaint, cross-checked against the relevant provisions of Korea’s Criminal Act and the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection. The distinction from the 2023 Gangnam Unni patient-brokering conviction is based on that case’s official court record.

No primary source cited2 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

Foreign patients who’ve traveled anywhere that runs on gratuities tend to arrive in Korea with the same quiet question: after a laser session or a consultation, do you leave something extra for the nurse, the coordinator, the doctor? The answer is no — not as an unwritten courtesy, and not because Korean service is somehow already “included” in an American sense. It’s closer to the opposite: openly offering cash on top of a bill is unusual enough that it can make staff uncomfortable, since there’s no norm for how to receive it.

Where the no-tipping expectation comes from

Tipping has never been a standard part of Korean service-industry culture, at restaurants or anywhere else, and that baseline extends to clinics without any procedure-specific rule needed. Part of what reinforces it nationally is a pricing regulation with a specific starting point: on January 1, 2013, a nationwide amendment to the Enforcement Rule of the Food Sanitation Act introduced a “final payment price display” requirement for restaurants, requiring menu prices to already include VAT and any service charge, so a customer’s bill matches what’s posted rather than arriving with add-ons layered on top. The system was built specifically to stop the surprise of seeing a bill padded with charges that never appeared on the menu.

That particular regulation targets food service pricing, not medical institutions — but it reflects a broader consumer-protection instinct that shows up differently in healthcare: Korean clinics operate under their own, separate transparency requirement.

The clinic-specific version of the same idea

Medical institutions in Korea are required under the Medical Act to publicly post the cost of procedures not covered by national health insurance — which is most cosmetic and dermatology treatment. That means the price you’re quoted is meant to already be the number, not a starting point for negotiation-by-gratuity or a base that service charges get added to later. It’s a different law solving a related problem: instead of banking on a tip to smooth over inconsistent pricing, both restaurants and clinics in Korea are pushed toward the same outcome — post the real number up front.

What this means if a bill looks off

If you’re handed a bill at a Korean clinic that includes a line item for a service charge or gratuity, that’s worth a direct question before you pay it — it runs against both the general cultural expectation and the fee-transparency framework clinics operate under. On the other side, if you want to show appreciation for a particularly attentive nurse or coordinator, cash tips aren’t the mechanism for that in Korea; a written thank-you or, increasingly, a positive review serves the same purpose without putting staff in an awkward spot.

This is not a clinic-only custom. That rule governs restaurants, not clinics. It did not create the no-tipping norm and does not apply to medical fees — but it is the clearest written expression of the same expectation: the posted number is the number you pay. Our sister site covers it in full: You Don’t Tip in Korea, and There’s a Rule Behind It.

---

The final-price-display requirement is set by the Enforcement Rule of the Food Sanitation Act, effective 1 January 2013; we confirmed the instrument and date through Korean government announcements but have not yet read the annexed table text itself, so we treat the detail as reported rather than verified. Clinic fee-posting requirements are drawn from the Medical Act’s provisions on non-covered treatment cost disclosure.

1 primary source checked1 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

Prepaid treatment packages are standard at Korean skin and cosmetic clinics — pay upfront for a bundle of sessions, often at a discount. Until recently, the fine print attached to many of those packages meant that if you changed your mind partway through, you could lose the entire remaining balance. On July 19, 2026, Korea’s Fair Trade Commission announced it had ordered 15 dermatology and plastic surgery clinics to rewrite exactly those terms.

What the clinics’ contracts used to say

Following a review covering 2023 and 2024, the FTC identified six categories of contract terms it classified as unfair under the Act on the Regulation of Terms and Conditions. Among them: dissatisfaction with treatment results wasn’t accepted as grounds for a refund, refunds were denied once a certain time period had passed, refunds were denied if a package’s stated validity period had expired, promotional or event-priced packages were excluded from refunds entirely, patients weren’t allowed to transfer or resell unused prepaid treatment credits to someone else, and if the specific doctor named in the contract left the clinic, patients had no refund right — regardless of whether they wanted to continue with a replacement doctor.

Under those terms, a clinic could functionally keep some or all of a prepayment even when a patient had done nothing wrong and simply wanted to stop.

What changed

The clinics revised their standard contracts so that a simple change of mind is now valid grounds for canceling a prepaid package. On cancellation, the clinic settles the cost of treatments already received, deducts a penalty of up to 10 percent under Korea’s standard consumer dispute resolution criteria, and refunds the remainder. That 10 percent figure replaces penalty clauses that had run as high as 20 to 30 percent in the contracts the FTC reviewed. The revisions also removed clauses barring patients from transferring unused treatment credit to a third party, waiving the clinic’s civil and criminal liability, and prohibiting patients from filing complaints or lawsuits. Clinics are now required to offer a refund, or a mutually agreed replacement provider, if the doctor named in the original contract leaves.

The corrections were made voluntarily by the 15 clinics rather than through a formal penalty, and the FTC has indicated it’s considering a standard-form contract template that would apply more broadly across the industry going forward.

What this means if you’re prepaying for a package now

If a clinic’s cancellation terms still describe a penalty higher than 10 percent for a simple change of mind, or deny refunds outright for reasons like a doctor leaving or a promotional price, that contract language is now out of step with what Korea’s consumer protection regulator has already ruled unfair for at least 15 comparable clinics. It’s worth asking to see the cancellation clause in writing before you prepay for any multi-session package, and checking whether it reflects the post-July-2026 standard.

---

Details on the corrected contract terms are drawn from Korea Fair Trade Commission announcements and multiple independent Korean news reports dated July 19, 2026. This article does not identify the specific clinics involved, as the FTC’s public announcement did not name them.

1 primary source checked1 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

If a treatment goes wrong in Korea, there is a formal, government-run path to a resolution that doesn’t require a lawsuit: the Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Agency, known as K-MEDI. It’s open to foreign patients, it’s inexpensive to file with, and a successful mediation carries the same legal weight as a court settlement. It also has a structural weak point that matters specifically for cosmetic and dermatology cases, and most foreign patients never learn about it until they need it.

How the process works, and what it costs

Filing costs 22,000 won for smaller claims, with the fee scaling up for larger claim amounts — for example, a 10 million won claim carries a 32,000 won filing fee. Fee waivers exist for recipients of basic livelihood support and national merit recipients, with discounts for people with disabilities. Applications can be submitted online, in person, or by mail or fax, and the case is formally registered within one to two business days after the fee is paid.

Once filed, the law sets a target processing window of 90 days, extendable by 30 more — a maximum of 120 days — though time spent gathering documents or waiting on medical assessments doesn’t count against that clock, so real cases can run longer.

The scenario that determines whether you get a hearing at all

This is the part that matters most. Under the law governing the system, mediation proceedings start automatically — without the clinic’s agreement — only in three situations: the patient died as a result of the treatment, the patient has been unconscious for one month or longer, or the patient suffered a severe, legally defined disability. That automatic-start rule has applied since November 30, 2016.

Outside those three scenarios — which cover the large majority of cosmetic and dermatology complaints, since these procedures are rarely fatal or disabling — the clinic has to actively agree to participate. If the clinic doesn’t respond within 14 days of being notified of the complaint, the case is dismissed and the process ends there. There is no requirement that a clinic explain its refusal, and no mediation happens without it.

What this means in practice

If your complaint involves a botched injectable, an unexpected scar, or a billing dispute — the overwhelming majority of what foreign patients report — K-MEDI can still hear your case, but only if the clinic chooses to show up. A non-response is functionally the same as a refusal, and it costs the clinic nothing.

This doesn’t make the process pointless. Filing creates an official record, costs very little, and a clinic that’s confident it did nothing wrong often has more incentive to participate than one that doesn’t. But it’s worth going in with an accurate picture: for most cosmetic-treatment disputes, K-MEDI is a channel that requires the other side’s cooperation, not a guaranteed hearing.

---

Figures on filing fees, processing timelines, and the automatic-initiation rule are drawn from the Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Agency’s own published procedure guidance and legal-practice summaries of the underlying statute.

No primary source cited2 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 12 Aug 2026

Korean dermatology draws visitors on reputation alone — and for routine treatments, that reputation is generally earned. But across patient forums, consumer complaint boards, and documented cases involving foreign visitors, the same seven problems recur often enough to be predictable rather than anecdotal. None of them are reasons to skip a skincare trip. They’re reasons to walk into the consultation room with better questions than most tourists bring.

1. The price on the screen is not the price you’ll pay

The single most common complaint from foreign visitors is price transparency — or the lack of it. Clinics in tourist-heavy areas like Myeongdong, Hongdae, and parts of Gangnam are known to show pricing only on a consultation-room screen, decline to print a quote, and revise the total upward once you’re already seated. A common pattern: an ad for an ultra-cheap single treatment (a “50,000 KRW laser session,” for example) is the hook, and the real total appears only after add-ons are proposed during consultation.

What to do: Ask for a written quote — email or messaging app, not a screen — before you show up. If a clinic won’t commit to a number in writing, treat that as your answer.

2. “You should really do this today” is a sales tactic, not medical advice

Time pressure is one of the clearest warning signs reported by tourists. Coordinators frequently frame same-day upsells as urgent — “your skin is best treated now,” “this discount is only for today” — which pushes patients into decisions they haven’t researched. This shows up alongside “foreigner package” bundles that add services never requested.

What to do: It’s completely acceptable to say “I’ll think about it and message you” and leave. A clinic that respects that answer is a clinic worth returning to.

3. You may be talking to a salesperson, not a doctor

A recurring complaint in longer reviews is that the entire consultation — diagnosis, treatment recommendation, even injections in some reported cases — is handled by a coordinator rather than a licensed physician. One widely cited account described actual doctor face-time as “five minutes” out of a much longer visit.

What to do: Ask directly: “Will the doctor personally perform this procedure?” Hesitation or a vague answer is a signal to walk away, particularly for anything injectable or invasive.

4. Multiple treatments in one visit is a red flag, not a value deal

Packages that stack laser, chemical peel, microneedling, and injectables into a single afternoon are marketed as efficient — but dermatologists generally recommend spacing aggressive treatments apart to let skin recover. Foreign patients who accepted stacked packages have reported unexpected swelling, prolonged redness, and in some cases worse breakouts than they arrived with.

What to do: For a first visit, request a single treatment. Ask what the realistic downtime is, and whether it conflicts with your remaining travel days.

5. Vague treatment names hide what you’re actually getting

“Premium laser” and “signature rejuvenation package” are marketing terms, not treatment names. Without the actual device name and procedure type, it’s difficult to research the treatment in advance or know what to expect afterward.

What to do: Before agreeing to anything, get the exact device name and procedure name in writing. If a clinic can’t or won’t tell you specifically what device is being used, that’s worth asking about before proceeding.

6. “Ghost doctors” are a real, documented risk

This is the most serious item on this list. Reported cases — including fatalities — have involved unlicensed personnel performing procedures under a licensed doctor’s name, a practice sometimes called “ghost surgery” or “shadow doctoring.” It is far more associated with invasive cosmetic surgery than routine skincare treatments, but the underlying issue — not knowing who is actually treating you — applies across the industry.

What to do: For anything beyond basic facials or non-invasive treatments, verify that the person performing the procedure is the same person you consulted with, and don’t hesitate to ask about their credentials directly.

7. Aftercare often ends the moment you leave the country

Multiple travelers have reported that once they returned home, follow-up communication became difficult or stopped entirely — no English-language aftercare instructions, no response to messages about side effects, no treatment records to show a doctor back home if something went wrong.

What to do: Before you leave the clinic, get written aftercare instructions in English, an emergency contact, and a copy of exactly what was done to your skin. If the clinic can’t provide this before you leave the building, they’re unlikely to provide it after you’ve left the country.

---

The bottom line

None of this means skip the skincare tour — Korean dermatology and skincare technology genuinely lives up to the reputation. The difference between a great trip and an expensive regret usually comes down to five minutes of preparation: a written quote, a name (not a title) for who’s treating you, and a plan for what happens if something goes wrong after you’ve flown home.

This article is based on aggregated patient reports, consumer complaints, and documented cases from foreign visitors to Korean skin clinics. It is not medical advice.