Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) has started to explore the U.S. market to attract medical tourists to Korea.
KTO signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Mymedchoices (MMC), a local medical tourism company, in Delaware on Jan. 27 (local time) to attract more medical tourists to Korea.
Asan Medical Center, a local medical institution, Hyundai Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and Juwon Healthcare also jointly participated in the MOU.
The signing ceremony was attended by Yong Sun-joong, head of the KTO's New York branch, MMC CEO and Jeffrey Bullock, secretary of state for the Delaware state government.
MMC, which specializes in medical tourism in Delaware, is a company that collects medical tourists through its online platform (www.mymedchoices.com) to major U.S. companies, institutions and individuals and sends them around the world.
It already sent about 3,000 medical tourists to Korea every year. The MOU with KTO is aimed at further expanding the delivery of medical tourists to South Korea.
“The number of American tourists visiting Korea surpassed 1 million for the first time last year, and the number of medical tourists visiting Korea is also on the rise every year,” said Yong. "The MOU will serve as an opportunity to explore the mainstream U.S. medical tourism market and strengthen the momentum after the 1 million tourists who visited Korea."
According to KTO, a total of 42,563 American medical tourists visited Korea in 2018. It accounted for 11.2 percent of the total of 378,967 medical tourists to Korea. Mostly American medical tourists visited clinics in the order of dermatology and plastic surgery.