韓國推動國際醫療觀光的現況與展望

As commonly recognized, the development of tourism could boost a nation's visibility and fame aside from facilitating the development of its infrastructures while allowing for a massive foreign income. For this reason, tourism is often referred to as the smokeless industry, a newborn golden industry. In recent years, countries around the world have emphasized tourism as an industry that boosts a country's soft power, and promoted their tourism with full support. From the tourism strategies of nearby Korea, it can be observed that they have changed direction from general tourism with cultural creativities to cultural tourism, and then to creative tourism. Creative tourism includes international medical tourism, MICE (Meeting, incentives, conventions, exhibitions) tourism, cruise tourism and composite tourisms that combines tourism with other industries like information and communications technology industry. In 2009, the government of Korea have allowed medical institutions and businesses from related industries to promote themselves internationally in order to attract foreign patients to come to Korea for medical tourism. While many regulations have not been loosened or revised yet, the outcome of the collaboration between its businesses, academic sector and government was visibly significant since Korea started promoting its medical tourism. The intention of this study is to analyze, generalize and discuss Korea's policies, directions and results on international medical tourism. The study is expected to promote further understanding in Korea's developments on international medical tourism, as well as to utilize Korea’s experience to boost our own medical tourism.