Overseas patient demand shifts to local clinics

Demand for traditional Korean medicine treatment among foreign patients is moving more strongly toward individual Korean medicine clinics than large hospitals. Last year, the number of foreign patients who received integrated traditional Korean medicine care rose to 37,087, and most of them visited clinic-level Korean medicine practices, with the share of Japanese patients rising especially sharply.

This trend is explained not only by price competitiveness, but also by the fact that the recovery burden before and after procedures is relatively low and that the experience of having the same medical practitioner handle everything consistently from consultation to treatment gives overseas consumers confidence. This shift is also being confirmed at the local level, with cases such as Gangseo-gu expanding its medical tourism achievements into plans for a research and development hub.

Export systems lag behind tourism-driven treatment

The problem is that while demand from patients traveling to Korea for treatment has grown, there are still almost no institutional mechanisms to allow that treatment experience to continue overseas. Although the global traditional medicine market is projected to grow to $768.2 billion by 2027, domestic herbal medicine products in Korea remain constrained both in approvals for finished products and in the overseas carry-out of customized formulations, blocking international expansion.

In particular, formulations prepared through external herbal dispensaries are difficult to connect to overseas patients or Korean medicine doctors practicing abroad, even when demand is confirmed on the ground, because the legal basis remains insufficient. As a result, treatment for visitors to Korea may continue through repeat visits and word of mouth, but continuity of prescriptions and product commercialization are institutionally cut off, reinforcing a structure in which much of the industry’s growth remains limited to domestic visit-based consumption.

Government and industry seek to establish new standards

As the market expands, the government is simultaneously trying to broaden traditional Korean medicine and establish control standards. In the automobile insurance sector, as disputes and the sharp rise in traditional Korean medicine treatment costs have accumulated, relevant ministries, the insurance industry, and the traditional medicine sector have jointly launched a consultative body to create principles for appropriate treatment and standards for dispute resolution, based on the view that the existing eight-week rule alone is not enough to prevent loopholes and abuse.

Issues involving professional roles and institutional design have also resurfaced. As the Ministry of Health and Welfare stated that it sympathizes with the reality that herbal pharmacists find it difficult to effectively perform their core duty of preparing herbal medicines, discussions on adjusting the herbal pharmacist system and the broader pharmacist system are increasingly likely to go beyond a simple professional turf conflict and lead to a reorganization of the supply system.

Tasks that remain after expansion in the field

Meanwhile, traditional Korean medicine is expanding its reach beyond tourism and treatment into technical standards and care services. Pulse-diagnosis-based devices are being linked to international standards such as ISO 18615:2020, and in local settings, home-visit management models using a smart traditional Korean medicine care and home-care app are also being tested, showing how the use of traditional Korean medicine is expanding beyond the treatment room.

However, for this expansion to be sustainable, quality control and standardization will become more important than demand growth itself. As discussions around attracting foreign patients, insurance-based treatment, near-remote care, and overseas carry-out all grow at the same time, future competitiveness is likely to depend less on how many patients can be drawn in and more on what standards are used to maintain safety and trust.