Seoul Skin Clinics Now Take 63% of Myeongdong

Between 77% and 81% of foreign tourists who visit Seoul go to Myeongdong. At that visit rate, Myeongdong's payment data functions as a scale model of what foreign visitors actually do in Korea.

Creatrip, an inbound travel platform, analysed Myeongdong transaction data for the first quarter of 2026. The striking part is not the total. It is that the direction of the money changed completely.

At a glance

The row that matters is neither share but the gap between the last two. Visitor numbers rose 19% while spending rose 46%. That is not more people; it is the same people buying something more expensive — and this piece is about what that something turned into.

Why Myeongdong works as a sample

Myeongdong is a commercial district in Seoul's Jung-gu. It is not the city's largest retail area by absolute size, but its share of foreign visitors is overwhelming. Seoul Tourism Organization figures show 77% of foreign visitors to Seoul went there last year, with a provisional figure of about 81% for May 2026.

So what sells in Myeongdong is close to synonymous with what foreign visitors buy in Korea. The district built its reputation as a corridor of cosmetics shops — and today the largest flow of money on that street is not going through a cosmetics shop.

From 43% to 63% — and where plastic surgery went

The Myeongdong-level numbers first.

• 2025: hair salons took 43% of transaction value, the top category
• Q1 2026: dermatology clinics took 63%, the top category

The pie grew as well. Transaction value rose 45% and spend per person rose 44% year over year. Because per-person spending rose alongside visitor numbers, this is not simply a case of more tourists inflating a total.

Widen the frame to Seoul and a larger migration appears. This is foreign spending at medical institutions, broken out by specialty, over two years.

Two years ago plastic surgery led this table. Cosmetic dermatology now takes two thirds of it and plastic surgery has fallen to a fifth. This is not a story about Korean medical tourism growing. It is a story about it switching products — from surgery to procedures, from things needing days of recovery to things that finish the same afternoon.

The overall scale grew too. Foreign spending at medical institutions rose 98.0% year over year, and medical care went from 12.6% to 16.3% of total foreign consumption. 92.8% of that spending happens in Seoul.

Which nationalities grew

By growth in payment value:

By Creatrip booking volume, Taiwan and the United States each sit around 18% at the top, while Japan posted the fastest growth at roughly 42% year over year.

For readers in Southeast Asia there are two things in that table. One is that Singapore leads it — this route is already open from the region and already being used at scale. The other is that the market has been reorganised around a specific trip shape: fly in, stay a few days, have a procedure, fly home.

The map moved too — out of Gangnam, into Seocho and Jung-gu

Which districts of Seoul receive the money also shifted.

Gangnam is still first, but it gave up more than ten percentage points of share, split between Seocho and Jung-gu. Jung-gu's rise points the same way as the Myeongdong data: clinics that sit on the tourist walking route are gaining.

Why pharmacies grew 1,176%

But the strangest line in that table is the pharmacy row. The share is small at 2.0%, but the growth rate is 1,176.9% — the highest of any category.

Small bases produce large percentages, so treat the number carefully. But the direction is clear: the things people use after a procedure started selling alongside it. Laser and lifting treatments are followed by soothing, moisturising and sun protection, and those products get bought at a pharmacy near the clinic. Korean companies have been expanding into exactly this aftercare and device space.

The accurate reading is that a procedure is becoming a bundle rather than a single purchase.

Why hair gave way to skin

From here this is interpretation rather than measured fact, and it is worth marking that line clearly.

Hair services fade in a few weeks and, more importantly, you can get them at home. Laser, lifting and skin booster treatments differ sharply between countries in both price and waiting time. Once the total cost including airfare drops below the home-market equivalent, flying for the procedure becomes arithmetic rather than indulgence. The price list of the salons that used to hold that 43% is in why 'cut' appears several times on a Korean menu.

The social media weight differs as well. "I got my hair done in Korea" and "I had a procedure done in Korea" have different half-lives as posts. The second keeps showing results for months, so the review circulates longer.

Plastic surgery's fall to 21.3% reads along the same axis. Surgery needs recovery time and does not fit inside a holiday. A procedure does. A weaker won has also been cited as improving the total-cost maths.

None of that is confirmed by the data itself. What is confirmed: the share moved from 43% to 63%, spend per person rose 44%, and cosmetic dermatology took plastic surgery's place.

What this means where you are

The 63% is the size of a trend, not a guarantee of safety. That many people made the same choice and that the choice suits your skin are two different statements.

Read next

• A quarter of Olive Young's sales come from foreign customers — how much cosmetics sells on the same street
• 'You do not look your age' as a compliment — the cultural background of this demand
• Daiso went from 7 beauty brands to 160 — the 5,000-won approach to the same goal
• Foreign visitors spent 10 trillion won on cards in Korea in six months — the larger table this spending sits inside

Sources

• Maeil Ilbo — foreign spending in Myeongdong shifts from hair to dermatology (Korean)
• Money Today — 145.2 billion won spent at Korean dermatology clinics (Korean)
• Travel Daily — Creatrip releases Q1 Myeongdong transaction data (Korean)
• Herald Business — foreign medical spending doubles in a year (Korean)