Medical tourism is on the rise, and Korea hopes to win a bigger share.

The Council for Korea Medicine Overseas Promotion, a government-sponsored institution that promotes medical tourism in Korea, says it hopes to raise the cumulative number of foreign medical travelers here to 140,000 by 2012. In that year the global cross-border health care industry is expected to reach $100 billion, based on a recent report by the global managing consulting firm McKinsey and Company.

McKinsey also predicted that the number of global medical travelers will increase from 19 million in 2005 to 40 million in 2010. To take advantage of that growing market, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has amended the law to allow medical institutions, starting next month, to partner with travel agencies and market their services to foreign medical travelers.