How do I check that a Korean clinic and its doctor are licensed?

Check the clinic in the official listings.

The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) runs a medical institution search where you choose a region and institution type and can add the clinic’s name. The page is in Korean, so it helps to have the clinic’s Korean name and address from its website or booking message. A result shows the registered name and address, which you can compare with where you are being asked to go.

Medical Korea, run by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute, has an English directory of institutions registered to attract foreign patients, searchable by type, region, name or phone number. Registered institutions have had to carry medical malpractice liability insurance since 2016. Registration is a choice a clinic makes, so a licensed clinic can be absent from this list. Presence tells you something useful; absence alone does not settle the question.

What you can and cannot check about the doctor.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare runs a licence registration lookup, but its guidance describes it as a service for institutions and organisations, used with an institutional login and the consent of the person being looked up. It also states that administrative sanctions are not shown. In practice a traveller checks the doctor through what the clinic is required to show and through direct questions.

Article 4 of the Medical Service Act requires the head of a medical institution to have medical staff wear name tags so patients can tell who is providing care, with exceptions such as emergencies and operating rooms. Read the tag of the person who examines you and the person who treats you. They may not be the same person, and you are entitled to know both.

Reading a clinic name and signboard.

Under Article 40 of the Enforcement Rule of the Medical Service Act, a clinic may place a recognised specialty in its name, such as dermatology (피부과) between the clinic’s own name and the word for clinic (의원), when the founder is a specialist. The signboard may also show the licence type and names of the medical staff who practise there and the founder’s specialist qualification.

A clinic can treat skin without dermatology in its name, and a specialist founder does not mean every doctor on duty is a specialist. Use the name as a starting point, then ask who will see you.

Brokers, and the questions that fill the gaps.

Medical Korea explains that attracting foreign patients without registration is illegal in Korea and that unregistered brokers can be reported at kmediwatch.kr. If someone other than the clinic arranges your appointment, ask whether they are registered and whom you are paying.

UK NHS guidance suggests asking practitioners how many of these procedures they have done and what qualifications and training they have. Those questions work in Korea too, and a clinic that serves foreign patients should be comfortable answering them.

• What is the full name of the doctor who will examine me?
• Is the doctor who treats me the same person?
• What specialist qualification, if any, does that doctor hold?
• How often does that doctor perform this treatment?

Checks before you book

What travelers ask

The questions behind the search.

Bring these with you

Questions to ask at your consultation

Pick the questions you want to raise, then save them or open them in text translation.