Healthcare in South Korea

I am not famaliar with what one has to do when being employed as anything other than a teacher but the Korean health care system is fantastic!

When arriving in Korea you'll have to do a medical check and then you'll be issued with your medical card through your employer.

Overall the medical system is easy to use and very efficient as well as cheap. There's plenty of staff who speak good english. Have a look at my article called "Sick in Korea?", this is an example of my experience using a Korean hospital and their medical services.

Thanks for your input kiwiinkorea !

Armand

Hi,

In order to help expats and soon-to-be expats, we would like to invite you to share your experience on this topic, with updated info on the healthcare system.

Thank you in advance,

Julie
Expat.com Team

Health Care System in Korea is one of the best around the world. If some one has a family health insurance card then its really cheap. Almost all services are 70% less. Family insurance costs 40 USD/month. Doctors are also so friendly. Govt. hospitals are much more expensive than non govt. health care organizations.

Only good experiences from me! I'm under the National Health Insurance Plan and it covers 50%. When I go see a doctor it's about 2,000 won, prescriptions I've never had to pay over 10,000 won, and I got chest x-rays done last week and they were around 8,000 won. Have also been pleasantly surprised by their English level! Also, no appointments necessary, you can simply walk in to any hospital. Very fast wait times!

Hi Julien,

I was also not familiar with any of it until fairly recently. Having lived in countries where free medical care was available to residents and/or citizens, medical care here was a bit nightmarish. Firstly you have to be aware that there are three level of medical institutions in Korea. Something like class A, B and C. So even if you have Korean National Insurance, as you normally would when employed, you would be charged differently according to which class of medical centre you go to. I imagine that one of the previous commentors was speaking about a C level medical centre to be charged around 3000 won for consultation. I went to an A class medical centre with Korean National Insurance (not knowing anything about the classes then) and paid close to 18,000 won for consultation only. Other tests were extras. Prescriptions should cost the same though. A friend who did not have any insurance had to pay something like 400,000-500,000 won for a jab/X-ray (only one, not both) in the same A class institution. A class institutions are like Samsung Medical centre, SNUH and several other elite centres, they are even more expensive the conventional private centres (B class), while C class would be the smaller medical centres. My advice would be:

1) Definitely get yourself insured. If you get private insurance your contributions will depend on your income (pay more if you earn more).
2) Be aware of the type of medical centre you are going to. I'm not sure how much better these A class centres are but I would certainly not go there for a common cold (lesson learnt)! Koreans tend to go to several doctors when ill with something more serious so as to get a wider range of opinions regarding what treatment would be best for them.
3) Try to get recommended for specialists. This is common in Korea, I have heard of nightmares where some bogus doctor makes a mess on the patient (e.g. a dentist) and runs away, closing shop. So having a reliable specialist attend to something non-trivial would help tonnes.

I'm also curious to hear about more experiences from others. Thanks.

Korean Health Care is more efficient than Europe (I lived in UK, France and Italy), Doctors are very skilled, personnel speaking English very often, medication is very efficient, service is very fast and cheap.
there is no need to book an appointment.
Last week I went to Dermatologist,Total cast (Doctor+medication)= 6.000 Won , incredible !.