Category: Law & Rights

Note №14PATIENT 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.

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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.

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Note №8CULTURE & PRICES

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.

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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.

Note №7CONSUMER PROTECTION

1 primary source checked1 reported, unconfirmedReviewed 13 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 16 July 2026, Korea’s Fair Trade Commission published the result of a review into prepaid-treatment contracts at 15 dermatology and cosmetic surgery clinics. All 15 agreed to rewrite the terms themselves. The commission did not issue an order, and it did not change any law. What it did was audit fifteen contracts and get them fixed.

Before going further, the limit of this news: it covered fifteen named clinics. If the clinic you are booking is not one of them, nothing about your contract changed in July. The 10 percent figure everyone quoted comes from Korea’s Consumer Dispute Resolution Standards, which guide how disputes are settled rather than binding every clinic in advance. The commission has said it is considering a standard contract for the sector. It has not issued one yet.

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, and for whom

The 15 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. Those clinics are now required to offer a refund, or a mutually agreed replacement provider, if the doctor named in the original contract leaves.

All of that applies to the fifteen contracts the commission looked at. It is not a rule the rest of the industry has been made to follow.

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

Assume your clinic’s contract still says whatever it says. Read the cancellation clause before you prepay for any multi-session package, and get it in writing.

If that clause describes a penalty higher than 10 percent for a simple change of mind, or denies refunds outright for reasons like a doctor leaving or a promotional price, it is out of step with what Korea’s competition regulator has already identified as unfair in fifteen comparable clinics. That is not a ruling that binds your clinic. It is leverage: you can point at it, by name and date, and ask why your contract still says something the regulator has already had fifteen clinics remove.

Source: Korea Fair Trade Commission press release, “15개 의원의 선납진료 이용약관 상 불공정 약관 시정” (Correction of unfair terms in the prepaid-treatment contracts of 15 clinics), 16 July 2026, Terms and Special Transactions Division — read in the original, 13 August 2026. This article does not identify the specific clinics involved.

Correction, 13 August 2026: An earlier version of this article said the Fair Trade Commission had ordered the clinics to rewrite their terms, and its headline implied the 10 percent cap now applies to Korean clinics generally. Both overstated the action. The fifteen clinics corrected their contracts voluntarily, and the change binds only them. We have rewritten the headline and the affected passages against the commission’s own release of 16 July 2026.

No equivalent action has been taken on hair salons, where prepaid packages fall outside Korea’s prepaid-instalment protection regime entirely — explained here.

The same commission lost the equivalent fight over hotel booking platforms: the Supreme Court cancelled its orders in 2023 on the ground that a booking platform is an intermediary, not the contracting party. That case, and what it means for a cancelled room, is here.

Note №5DISPUTE SYSTEM

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.

Related. Where surgery was performed under general anaesthesia, this agency is also one of only three routes by which operating-room footage can be released — see how the recording request works, and who may view the result.

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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.