South Korea seeks to bolster medical tourism industry
SEOUL, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) — Park Sook-ja, a 66-year-old South Korean who has lived in the suburbs of New York for 37 years, has always felt insecure when it came to annual medical check-ups at year’s end.
“A simple medical check-up here in the United States is not only terribly expensive but also the service itself isn’t really convenient,” Park said.
It was not until last year that Park realized another option for health screening was available for her in the motherland, when she came across a newspaper advertisement about South Korea’s medical tour packages.
“I sort of remembered hearing about it from people in Los Angeles, but I had no idea it would be that good until actually taking part in the tour package,” Park said. “The South Korean government should push harder for the expansion of the industry,” she added.
Estimated to grow into a 10 billion U.S. dollar industry by 2012, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Company, global medical tourism is quickly becoming a potential gold mine for countries with advanced medical services, and the South Korean government is jump starting its efforts to tap into this lucrative market as well.
Medical tourism is basically regarded as the whole process of traveling abroad in order to get medical care, be it a regular check-up, cosmetic surgery, breast implants, or dental work.
In fact, South Korea lately has been seeing a burgeoning market in its health tourism industry, prompted by the government’s new law last year permitting domestic hospitals to serve foreigners with less restriction, causing a slew of new services and related groups to emerge.
For example, the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul has launched the “International CEO Health Program” last week, a luxury medical check-up program designed for high-end customers from overseas markets, while the Jaseng Hospital of Oriental Medicine recently opened a totally separate building only to serve foreign visitors.
Hospitals in Seoul’s posh Gangnam area have also initiated a medical tour association aimed at promoting its high-end services through overseas road shows and participation of medical conferences abroad.
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