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.
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