CHUNGCHEONGBUK-DO < invest Korea

According to Yonhap News,

(CHEONGJU=Yonhap News) Chungcheongbuk-do’s efforts to promote its medical tourism sector are now in full stride.

The province has carried out projects to attract foreign patients since 2013.

As a result, the number of overseas patients visiting the province increased from 816 in 2013 to 4,041 in 2016.

The provincial government estimates that the area attracted more than 4,000 medical tourists last year alone.

This result is impressive, given that the so-called “THAAD Backlash” resulted in a rapid decrease of Chinese tourists visiting Korea. In 2016 alone, 1,563 Chinese visited Chungcheongbuk-do.

To capitalize on this positive response, the provincial government decided to form a consortium with 12 medical institutions in the province and medical tourism agencies to operate promotion centers for Chungcheongbuk-do’s healthcare sector at five locations: Yakutsk, Russia; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Shenyang, China; and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Of the five locations, new promotion centers will be built this year in Tashkent and Shenyang. Moreover, the provincial government will organize public hearings for people from local medical institutions in Shenyang and other areas.

The government’s plan also include a project aimed at inviting highly influential local celebrities to the province for physical examination at one of the province’s medical institutions and other medical services.

The province also plans to dispatch Honorary Medical Tourism Ambassadors to eight to ten countries (currently five) and provide expert interpretation services for foreign patients visiting medical institutions in the province.

A Chungcheongbuk-do official said, “Even though we cannot match the healthcare infrastructure in the Seoul Capital Area in scale, we will promote our medical tourism sector by providing distinguished medical services and concentrating our efforts on the target countries.”

bwy@yna.co.kr

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Source Text

** This article was translated from the Korean.

Source: Yonhap News (Mar. 21, 2018)