Korea's local governments build health care clusters to attract foreign patients
The South Korean government announced medical tourism as one of its 17 next-generation growth engines. It set the goal to create a medical tourism boom following countries such as Thailand, Singapore and India. Following suit, local governments including Jeju Island plan to build health care clusters for medical tourism to attract foreign patients. Last year, South Korea earned about US$48 million from medical tourism, attracting 40,000 foreign patients.

This year, Daegu has launched Medi Citi as its own brand, arranging 40 hospitals to prepare English, Japanese and Chinese brochures, opening websites in foreign languages and participating in international conferences and exhibitions. Along with Osong in North Chungcheong Province, Daegu recently won US$5 billion in bids to build medical complexes.