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The number of medical tourists from China surpassed those from the U.S. for the first
time in 2012. The Korea Health Industry Development Institute
said Sunday that people from China represented 20 percent of all medical tourists to Korea
in 2012, surpassing those from the U.S., at 19-point-2 percent, for the first time.
The institute said nearly 160-thousand people from 188 countries came to Korea for medical
procedures in 2012, marking a 30-point-4 percent increase from the previous year.
They spent 267-point-3 billion won, or just over 252-million U.S. dollars, a 47-point-9
percent increase in medical spending from the year before.
The majority of medical tourists from China were women in their 20s and 30s, and half
of them had come for plastic surgery or other cosmetic procedures.