The number of foreigners getting medical treatment in Korea dropped 11.7 percent, marking the first decline since the government allowed medical institutions to bring foreign patients in 2009 actively, a government agency said Wednesday.

The drop in the number of foreign patients resulted in a 26 percent slash, or 220.8 billion won, in medical revenue from 860.6 billion won ($805.6 million) in 2016 to 639.8 billion won last year.

The number of foreign patients fell 12 percent, with the number of Chinese medical visitors dropping the most, data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare showed Wednesday.

Data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare showed the number of Chinese patients fell 21 percent, from 127,648 to 99,837 in 2017. Experts cite Beijing’s economic retaliation, caused by Seoul’s deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in Korea as a primary reason. On the whole, Chinese visitors fell nearly 50 percent over the cited period.

Excluding patients from Thailand and Japan, the number of foreign patients fell across the board, stressing the need for the government to set up an action plan to make up for the loss. Data showed that the number of foreign patients fell from 354,189 in 2016 to 321,574 last year.

The number of Russian patients fell 2.6 percent to 24,859, and those of patients from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan also dropped 16 percent and 20 percent to 15,010 and 12,566, respectively.

The number of patients from Southeast Asian countries also fell in part because people from Vietnam had trouble getting a Korean visa and people from the Philippines suffered from a weak peso. The number of Vietnamese patients dropped from 8,746 in 2016 to 7,447 last year while the number of Filipino patients fell from 3,686 to 3,116 over the cited period.

On the other hand, the number of visitors from Thailand getting medical treatment jumped 56 percent from 3,933 in 2016 to 6,137 last year. Most wanted to have cosmetic procedures, or treatment at the department of internal medicine. Medical visitors from Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan also jumped incrementally.

yjc@docdocdoc.co.kr

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