Busan Foreign Patients Hit Record High as Medical Tourism Shifts Into a Growth Industry

Busan foreign patients became one of the clearest signals of the city’s changing tourism economy in 2025. The city attracted 75,879 foreign medical tourists, its highest annual total since the program began in 2009, placing Busan second nationwide and first outside the Seoul metropolitan area.¹

The figures point to more than a simple rebound in travel. They show how Busan Medical Tourism is becoming a concentrated, policy-supported industry shaped by nearby Asian demand, dermatology services, and district-level clustering.

Busan Foreign Patients: The 2025 Numbers

The headline number is large, but the growth rate is even more important. Busan’s foreign medical tourist count rose 151.5% from 30,165 in 2024 to 75,879 in 2025.² That moved the city’s national ranking from third to second, while it kept the top position among non-capital-region destinations for a second consecutive year.¹

The nationality mix also gives the trend a clear regional profile. Taiwan accounted for 37.4% of Busan’s foreign medical tourists, followed by Japan at 22.2% and China at 15%.² Separate reporting said Taiwanese medical tourists increased 293% year on year, making Taiwan not only the largest market but also a key driver of the surge.¹

That pattern connects with wider tourism momentum. In the first quarter of 2026, Busan received 1,023,946 foreign tourists, with Taiwan again the largest group at 208,984 visitors, followed by China and Japan.⁴ The medical numbers should not be treated as identical to general tourism flows, but they sit inside the same broader expansion of foreign demand for Busan.

Why Dermatology and Busanjin-gu Matter

The most striking structural feature is concentration. Dermatology represented 67% of foreign patient treatments in 2025, and dermatology patients increased by more than 300% from the previous year.²¹ That makes Busan’s current medical tourism growth heavily dependent on one specialty category rather than evenly spread across all forms of care.

This can be an advantage. A strong specialty gives the city a clear market identity, especially for short-stay visitors who can combine travel with treatment. It can also make marketing more efficient because agencies, clinics, translators, and tourism programs can design around a known demand pattern.

The risk is that narrow concentration can make the market sensitive to changes in consumer preference, pricing, regulation, or competition from other cities. The available sources do not show whether other departments are growing at the same pace, so the safest conclusion is that Busan’s 2025 success was broad in headline numbers but highly focused in treatment composition.

The geography is even more concentrated. Busanjin-gu attracted about 61,000 foreign medical tourists in 2025, up around 236% from about 18,000 in 2024, and accounted for more than 80% of Busan’s citywide total.³ That positions the district as the practical center of the city’s foreign patient economy.

For policymakers and businesses, this clustering has two implications. First, Busanjin-gu can become a recognizable hub where clinics, accommodation, interpretation, beauty services, and local commerce reinforce one another. Second, other parts of Busan may need targeted support if the city wants medical tourism benefits to spread beyond a single district.

Policy Is Moving From Promotion to Infrastructure

Busan is not treating the growth as a passive tourism windfall. The city said it would invest 2.4 billion won in its 2026 medical tourism revitalization basic plan.² Acting Busan Mayor Kim Kyung-deok described medical tourism as a field where stays are longer and per-person spending is about four times that of general tourism.² That comment explains why the sector is being framed as an economic strategy rather than a niche visitor category.

Institutional support is also becoming more specific. In March 2026, Busan selected 14 leading cooperative medical institutions for foreign patient attraction: four general hospitals, two hospitals, six clinics, and two Korean medicine institutions.⁵ The city said it would support country-specific medical tourism product development, overseas briefings, and familiarization tours.⁵

Na Yun-bin, director of Busan’s Tourism and MICE Bureau, described the selection as an important step toward turning the sector into a strategic industry based on public-private cooperation.⁵ That matters because the policy direction is shifting from individual hospitals attracting patients on their own toward integrated marketing.

Language capacity is another piece of infrastructure. On May 13, 2026, Busan City and the Busan Economic Promotion Agency announced a 2026 program to train specialized medical tourism interpreters, citing the increase in foreign patients.⁶ The program focuses on practical interpreters who can connect medical services with foreign patients in the field.⁶

This is a useful sign of maturity. If patient volume rises faster than interpretation, coordination, and aftercare capacity, service quality can become uneven. The interpreter training program suggests that Busan is trying to support the less visible systems that make medical tourism function.

The 2025 data confirms that Busan foreign patients are now central to the city’s tourism and healthcare growth story. The next test is whether Busan can turn a record year led by Taiwan, dermatology, and Busanjin-gu into a more resilient medical tourism ecosystem with broader institutional capacity and consistent service quality.

작성자 소개

Cloi Lee

Author

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