What counts as a source

We rank sources, and we do not treat them as interchangeable.

1. Korean government and statutory bodies — the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Justice, and the national law database. Rules, penalties, registration requirements and tax changes come from here or they do not run.
2. Public institutional operators — district medical tourism offices, the 1330 tourist line, and public interpretation programmes, for service details and published fees.
3. Named reporting — established outlets, used for context and dates, never as the sole source for a number.

A clinic’s own marketing page is not a source for anything except what that clinic says about itself, and we label it that way when it appears at all.

The rule we apply to numbers

A price, a duration or a penalty is published only when we can point to where it came from and when it was true. Two things follow from that.

When we can’t verify a number, we write “varies by clinic” instead of guessing.

And every page carries the month it was last checked, because a 2024 price presented without a date is not information, it is decoration. Korea abolished the tourist VAT refund for cosmetic and aesthetic procedures on 1 January 2026, and English-language guides still telling readers to claim it at the airport are the exact failure this rule exists to prevent.

Why we do not recommend clinics

This is the question we get most, so here is the reasoning rather than the slogan.

• We cannot observe the thing that matters. Who holds the handpiece on the day you go, what settings they use, and how the clinic handles a complication are not visible from the outside. A recommendation would be a guess dressed as authority.
• A recommendation is worth money, which is exactly the problem. The moment a list exists, there is a reason to pay to be on it. Not having a list is what keeps the rest of the site honest.
• The checks transfer, the recommendation does not. Registration status, insurance, who is named on your consent form, and what happens if you need a follow-up are all things you can verify for any clinic, including ones we have never heard of.

So instead of a shortlist we publish criteria — what to verify, what to ask, and what a straight answer sounds like. The judgement stays with you, which is where it can actually be exercised.

What we will not publish

• Outcome claims. No procedure here will “cure”, “fix” or “permanently” do anything. We describe what a procedure is commonly used for and what people report.
• Invented people. No composite patients, no unattributed quotes, no before-and-after supplied by an interested party.
• Fear framing. We do not write “if you don’t do this, you will…”. Where something needs attention, we give a threshold instead: see a doctor if X lasts longer than Y.
• Named clinics in a recommending context. See above.

How pages get updated

Pages that depend on a rule — tax, visa, arrival paperwork, registration — are re-checked whenever that rule changes and re-dated when they are. Pages that depend on price are re-checked on a rolling basis and carry a range with a date attached, never a single figure presented as permanent.

Corrections log

Every correction we make to a published page is recorded here with its date. We do not remove entries. A publication that never appears to be wrong is either not publishing anything checkable or not telling you when it was.

Last verified: August 2026