In 2023, South Korea’s government announced a goal to attract 700,000 medical tourists by 2027, but strict defamation laws, cultural differences and nationwide doctors’ strikes present unique challenges to foreigners seeking medical and aesthetic treatments in the global beauty capital.

Apgujeong is the name of a particularly affluent ward in the upscale Gangnam district of Seoul, located right where the neighbourhood meets the southern bank of the Han River.

Nestled beneath towering skyscrapers sit rows and rows of cosmetic, aesthetic and dermatologic clinics, studded with adverts displaying slender, doe-eyed women with dewy porcelain skin and taglines like “Do you want your life to be like a movie?” Locals call it “Plastic Surgery Street,” and it’s become an unlikely tourist attraction as what foreigners imagine to be the white-hot core of the world’s beauty capital.

By the end of 2024, nearly 1.2 million foreign patients had travelled to the country with over half seeking out dermatologic treatments and cosmetic surgery, according to its Ministry of Health and Welfare.

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