Note №19PRICE TRANSPARENCY
Article 45 of Korea’s Medical Service Act requires every clinic to post the prices of its non-covered treatments, and forbids it from collecting more than the amount it posted. The Ministry of Health and Welfare notice that defines what must go on that list contains one sentence that removes foreign patients from it: the treatment costs of foreign patients who are not National Health Insurance subscribers or Medical Aid recipients are not subject to the posting requirement.
You are sitting in a Gangnam clinic. The person across the desk is the 상담실장 (sangdamsiljang) — the consultation manager, the one who quotes the price, and not the doctor — and they write a number on a tablet and turn it towards you. It is the first price anyone has said out loud, and you have no idea whether it is the price. That person may hold a national licence for the job, and is not required to.
Korea has a law for exactly this situation. Every medical institution must post what it charges for treatments that national insurance does not cover, and it may not collect more than the posted figure. It is a real protection, it is enforceable, and it is checkable from the waiting room.
It is also, by the text of the ministry notice that implements it, not written for you.
What does Korean law require a clinic to post?
Article 45(1) of the Medical Service Act (의료법, uiryobeop) requires the operator of a medical institution to give notice of 비급여 진료비용 (bigeupyeo jillyobiyong) — the cost of treatments excluded from National Health Insurance coverage — in a form patients or their guardians can easily understand. Cosmetic dermatology sits almost entirely inside that category, because purely aesthetic treatment is excluded from insurance coverage in the first place.
Article 45(2) adds certificate and document fees to the posting duty. These are the fees for a copy of your chart or a written diagnosis — the paperwork you may need after you fly home.
The enforcement rule sets the physical form. Article 42-2(1) of the Medical Service Act Enforcement Rule requires the clinic to keep a booklet listing each non-covered item and its price at the reception desk or somewhere else patients can easily see it. Article 42-2(4) requires a clinic that runs a website to show the same information there.
The ministry notice underneath that rule is more specific still. The Guideline on Notice of Non-covered Treatment Costs (보건복지부고시 제2023-192호) requires the list to appear on a bound booklet, a loose printout, a menu board, a wall poster, or a dedicated price-lookup computer, at one or more high-traffic locations such as the reception or admissions desk, with a sign pointing to it. Online, it must sit somewhere easy to find on the site’s front screen, and the notice explicitly discourages designs where a price only appears when you hover over it.
Can a Korean clinic charge more than its posted price?
Article 45(3) of the Medical Service Act says no. In full: the operator of a medical institution may not collect an amount exceeding the amount given notice of or posted under paragraphs 1 and 2.
That single sentence is the reason the posted list matters. A clinic in Korea sets its own non-covered prices, and two clinics on the same street may charge very different amounts for the same treatment — that is legal, and it is not what Article 45(3) is about. What Article 45(3) forbids is a clinic charging you more than the figure it published for itself. The list is not a national price cap. It is each clinic’s own ceiling, written by the clinic, binding on the clinic.
Does that posting requirement cover foreign patients?
By the text of the ministry notice, no. Article 2(2) of the Guideline on Notice of Non-covered Treatment Costs reads:
제1항에도 불구하고 건강보험 가입자 또는 의료급여 수급자가 아닌 외국인환자 등의 진료비용은 비급여 진료비용 등의 고지 대상으로 하지 아니한다.
Notwithstanding paragraph 1, the treatment costs of foreign patients and others who are not National Health Insurance subscribers or Medical Aid recipients shall not be subject to the notice requirement for non-covered treatment costs.
Article 2(1) is the paragraph that defines what goes on the list. Article 2(2) takes the treatment costs of non-insured foreign patients out of it.
A tourist on a short-stay visa is not a National Health Insurance subscriber. Read plainly, the notice says a clinic’s posting duty is a duty about domestic, insured patients’ prices — and that the price it quotes a visiting foreign patient is outside the scope of the list it is required to publish.
This provision is current. It appears in the version in force since 25 October 2023, and it appeared in identical wording in the previous version in force from 1 January 2021.
What does this not tell you?
It does not tell you that a clinic may charge foreign patients anything it likes, and we are not saying that.
Article 45(3) forbids collecting more than the posted amount, and it does not itself carve out foreign patients — the carve-out is in the ministry notice that defines the contents of the list. Whether a clinic that posted a price for a treatment can then collect more than that figure from a non-insured foreign patient is a question of how those two texts read together. We could not find an authoritative ruling or ministry interpretation resolving it, and we are not going to guess at one. This is a description of what the published texts say, not legal advice on your own bill.
What the exclusion does tell you is narrower and still useful: when you ask a Korean clinic for its posted price list, you are asking for a document that the law required it to build for someone else.
Two other things move the number a foreign patient pays, and neither is on any clinic’s wall. Foreign patients lost a 10 per cent discount on 1 January, and the bill to bring it back is stuck in committee. And how long you are staying decides which visa you need — Korea runs two different visas for medical patients.
Is there a national price database you can look up instead?
Yes, and it is worth knowing its shape before you rely on it. Article 45-2 of the Medical Service Act requires medical institutions to report their non-covered prices to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which surveys and publishes them. The work is delegated to the National Health Insurance Service and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (심사평가원, HIRA), which publishes the results on its website and its 건강e음 app.
Clinic-level institutions report once a year, hospital-level institutions twice. Under Article 10(5) of the reporting and disclosure notice, the price disclosure is published annually on the last Wednesday of August. The Ministry of Health and Welfare stated in a release dated 3 September 2025 that the 2025 disclosure covered 693 non-covered items across medical institutions nationwide.
The number to hold onto is 693, not “everything.” The database is a list of named items chosen by the ministry, not a dump of every price a clinic charges.
Will the national database have the treatment you came for?
Probably not, if you came for cosmetic dermatology. We read the full published item list for one year in the original — the 565 items disclosed for 2023 — and searched it item by item. It contains no botulinum toxin for wrinkles, no filler, no skin booster, no laser toning, no hair removal, no lifting. Where lasers appear at all, they appear as treatment for nail fungus, as laryngeal surgery, and as vein occlusion for varicose veins.
Two things visitors do travel to Korea for are on that list. Hair transplant surgery appears, banded by graft count — under 500 grafts, 500 to 1,000, 1,000 to 2,000, 2,000 and above, and a per-graft line. Laser vision correction appears as LASIK and LASEK. If that is what you are booking, the national database is a real comparison tool.
We have not read the 693-item 2025 list in the original, so we do not claim it is identical to the 2023 list we did read. What we can say is that the list we read was built out of insurance procedure codes for medical treatment, and aesthetic dermatology largely does not live there.
What is actually on the wall of a dermatology clinic, then?
The clinic’s own list — and it is usually more complete than the national database for cosmetic work. We opened the published non-covered price page of one Korean dermatology chain. It lists prices under headings for botulinum toxin, fillers, laser toning, fractional CO2 laser, acne treatment, skin boosters, lifting, hair removal and fat reduction, alongside a separate table of certificate fees, and it cites Article 45 of the Medical Service Act as the reason it exists.
It is entirely in Korean. That is not an oversight, and it is not a violation. If someone is interpreting the list for you, it is worth knowing that medical interpreters in Korea can hold a national certification most patients have never heard of. Nothing in Article 45, in Article 42-2 of the enforcement rule, or in the ministry notice requires the posted price list to appear in any language other than Korean. The one instrument that fixes a clinic’s own ceiling is published in a language most of its foreign patients cannot read, and is not required to include their prices in any case.
Posted prices are a medical-sector duty, and they do not reach every service a visitor buys. A Korean bathhouse operates under a different statute with no price-posting duty at all, which is why the body scrub has no published price anywhere.
What to ask before you agree to a price
- Ask to see the 비급여 진료비용 고지 — the posted non-covered price list — on paper, at the desk. It is required to be there, in one or more high-traffic spots, with a sign. Photograph it. A translation app will get you the numbers.
- Ask whether the price you have been quoted is the posted price. If it is higher, ask what the difference is for. You are entitled to an answer even if you are not entitled to the list.
- Check the clinic’s website price page before you go. A clinic that runs a website is required to publish the same list there, on the front screen, in a findable place.
- Get the quote in writing, with the treatment named, before you pay anything. The most common dispute foreign patients have with Korean clinics is not medical — it is about money already paid. We covered the regulator’s own data on that in our note on what people actually complain about, and a recent case where the competition regulator took issue with prepaid-treatment contract terms at a named group of clinics in our note on the FTC and 15 clinics’ no-refund clauses.
- Match the name on the list to the treatment you are being sold. Korean clinic menus run on product names rather than generic ones, which makes a posted list hard to read even in translation. We decoded the common ones in what Korean clinics are actually selling you.
- Ask for the certificate fee too if you will want records later. Those fees are covered by the same posting duty under Article 45(2), and you can still request your records after you fly home.
Common questions
Do Korean clinics have to show their prices?
Yes, for treatments not covered by national insurance. Article 45(1) of the Medical Service Act requires the operator of a medical institution to give notice of non-covered treatment costs, and Article 42-2 of the Enforcement Rule requires a price booklet at the reception desk and the same information on the clinic’s website if it has one. The ministry notice adds that the list must sit in at least one high-traffic location with a sign pointing to it.
Can a Korean clinic charge me more than the price on its list?
Article 45(3) of the Medical Service Act says a medical institution may not collect an amount exceeding the amount it gave notice of or posted. Different clinics charging different prices for the same treatment is legal; a clinic charging above its own published figure is what the provision addresses. How that provision applies to a non-insured foreign patient is unsettled, because the ministry notice defining the list excludes foreign patients’ costs from it. We could not find an authoritative interpretation, and this is not legal advice.
Are foreign patients covered by Korea’s clinic price-posting rules?
Not by the posting list itself. Article 2(2) of the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Guideline on Notice of Non-covered Treatment Costs (고시 제2023-192호, in force 25 October 2023) states that the treatment costs of foreign patients who are not National Health Insurance subscribers or Medical Aid recipients are not subject to the notice requirement. A short-stay visitor is not a subscriber.
Where can I compare prices between Korean clinics?
The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service publishes an annual non-covered price disclosure, released on the last Wednesday of August, covering 693 items in 2025 according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare. It is a fixed list of named items rather than every price a clinic charges. Hair transplant surgery and LASIK/LASEK are in it. In the full 2023 list of 565 items, which we read in the original, botulinum toxin, filler, skin boosters, laser toning, lifting and hair removal do not appear.
Does a Korean clinic have to post its prices in English?
Nothing in Article 45 of the Medical Service Act, Article 42-2 of its Enforcement Rule, or the ministry notice on notice methods requires the posted price list to be in any language other than Korean. In practice the lists we looked at are in Korean only.
The Clinic Notes — verified, source-cited information on cosmetic medicine in South Korea. We accept no payments or benefits from clinics, hospitals, doctors, or referral agencies.
Sources. All read in the original and confirmed on 13 August 2026.
Medical Service Act (의료법) Articles 45 and 45-2, and Medical Service Act Enforcement Rule (의료법 시행규칙) Article 42-2, via the National Law Information Centre (국가법령정보센터, law.go.kr). Article 45’s own most recent amendment is dated 22 March 2016.
Ministry of Health and Welfare, Guideline on Notice of Non-covered Treatment Costs (비급여 진료비용 등의 고지 지침), Notice No. 2023-192, in force 25 October 2023 — Articles 2, 3 and 4; the identical Article 2(2) wording verified against the superseded Notice No. 2020-339, in force 1 January 2021.
Ministry of Health and Welfare, Standards for the Reporting and Disclosure of Non-covered Treatment Costs (비급여 진료비용 등의 보고 및 공개에 관한 기준), Notice No. 2023-274 — Articles 2, 3, 6 and 10.
Ministry of Health and Welfare press release, “내가 받을 비급여 진료 가격, 심평원 홈페이지에서 확인하세요,” dated 3 September 2025, for the figure of 693 disclosed items.
Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, published disclosure item list for 2023 (565 items) — read in full and searched item by item for the cosmetic-treatment findings above.
The clinic price page described is a publicly posted non-covered price notice of a Korean dermatology chain; we name neither the clinic nor any price, because comparing named clinics’ prices is not something this site does.
Leave a Reply