Everything on this site is a record of what we found, not a vouch for any clinic. This page is the other half of that: the official tools you can use to check a Korean plastic surgery clinic yourself. They are listed strongest first — by what they actually prove, and by whether they work in English.
1. Is the clinic legally registered to treat foreign patients?
This is the single strongest yes-or-no check, and most patients have never heard of it. Under Korea’s Act on Support for Overseas Expansion of Healthcare System and Attraction of Foreign Patients, any clinic treating foreign patients must register with the government. Registration requires at least one board-certified specialist in each registered department and malpractice liability cover of at least 100 million won. A clinic treating foreign patients without that registration is operating illegally, and may carry no malpractice insurance at all.
The registry is public and searchable in English: MedicalKorea registered medical institutions, run by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. It currently lists over 17,000 registered institutions, of which roughly 1,560 have “성형외과” (plastic surgery) in their registered name. It shows whether a registration is still active or has been withdrawn.
2. Is the surgeon actually a board-certified plastic surgeon?
This matters more in Korea than most international patients realise, because of one fact: any licensed Korean physician may legally perform cosmetic procedures. Board certification in plastic surgery is not required to operate. What a non-specialist may not do is present themselves as a 성형외과 전문의 (board-certified plastic surgeon) or name the clinic “○○성형외과의원”.
The Korean Association of Plastic Surgeons runs a specialist search that works in English, returning romanised surgeon names, clinic names, phone numbers and English addresses: Search Plastic Surgeons. Use the name search rather than the region browse — the region browse returns Korean-script results. Only full members of the association are listed, so absence is not proof of anything; presence is confirmation.
There is also a low-tech signage tell, and it is written into Korean law rather than being folklore. Under Article 42 of the Enforcement Rule of the Medical Service Act, when a clinic displays a treatment department alongside its name, the department text must be no more than half the size of the clinic name. Article 40 of the same rule lets a clinic put a specialty into its own name only where the operator is a board-certified specialist, and Article 77(2) of the Medical Service Act prohibits anyone who is not a certified specialist from displaying a specialty at all. So the two cases genuinely look different on the sign:
- “○○성형외과의원” in one uniform size — a clinic run by a board-certified plastic surgeon.
- “○○의원” in large text with “진료과목: 성형외과” in noticeably smaller text, or a name ending in “클리닉” — cosmetic procedures are offered, but this is not a board-certified plastic surgery clinic.
You can also ask to see the specialist certificate displayed in the clinic, and simply ask the doctor directly whether they are a 성형외과 전문의. The association considers that a reasonable question, and treats false claims of specialist status seriously enough to run a reporting channel for it.
3. Is it a licensed medical institution, and what class?
Korea’s Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service maintains the authoritative directory of licensed medical institutions, including each one’s licensed class — 의원 (clinic), 병원 (hospital), 종합병원 (general hospital). Nearly all cosmetic surgery in Korea happens at 의원 level, which is normal and not a warning sign; what matters is that the institution exists in the registry at all.
Search it here: HIRA institution finder. It is Korean-only — HIRA’s English site is corporate information and has no clinic finder — so you will need the clinic’s Korean name. Every clinic in our neighbourhood lists is recorded with its Korean name for exactly this reason.
4. Does it hold KAHF accreditation?
KAHF is a government-backed accreditation specifically for institutions serving foreign patients, assessing foreign-patient management including interpretation, plus patient safety systems. The accredited list is public and in English, with useful per-clinic detail — interpreter languages, doctor and bed counts, accreditation term: KAHF accredited institutions.
Read absence as neutral. The list runs to only around two dozen institutions nationwide and is dominated by university and general hospitals. Four plastic surgery clinics appear on it at the time of writing. The overwhelming majority of perfectly legitimate Korean plastic surgery clinics are not on this list and never will be. Presence is a strong positive; absence tells you nothing.
5. What about price?
Here the useful answer is the opposite of what people expect. Korea does run a national system publishing clinic-level prices for non-covered treatments — but we checked its published item list, and cosmetic surgery is not in it. The list covers several hundred mostly therapeutic items; searches for double eyelid surgery, rhinoplasty, breast augmentation, facial contouring, botulinum toxin and fillers return nothing. Hair transplants and laser vision correction are included; aesthetic surgery is deliberately excluded.
What does apply is Article 45 of the Medical Service Act: every clinic must post its own non-covered prices where patients can see them, and may not charge more than the posted amount. That posted price list, not any government database, is the enforceable document. Ask for it, get the quote in writing, and confirm what it includes — anaesthesia, facility fees, follow-up visits, and revision policy are where quotes diverge.
6. Re-running our Naver Place searches
Our neighbourhood lists are built from Naver Place, the map and review platform Korean patients use. You can re-run the same searches at m.map.naver.com, substituting the Korean search term for the district you want.
Two honest caveats. You will not get our exact list. Naver’s ordering is its own ranking, it changes continuously, and it mixes paid placements into the results — which is why our lists carry the date they were checked and why we strip the ads out. And Naver Place is a commercial directory, not a registry. It carries no licensing signal whatsoever. Use it to see what Korean patients see; use the tools above to verify anything.
What you cannot check, and it’s worth knowing
There is no public way to look up an individual Korean doctor’s medical licence. The Ministry of Health and Welfare’s licence service allows you to view only your own credentials, using Korean digital authentication, and states plainly that looking up anyone else is not possible in order to prevent personal data leakage. The Korean Medical Association publishes no public physician directory either. The specialist searches in section 2 are the closest available substitute, and they only cover association members.
There is also no per-surgeon case volume data in Korea, no national count of cosmetic procedures performed, and no official regional price comparison. When you see those numbers quoted confidently, they are estimates at best.
This page describes public verification tools and Korean regulatory requirements as we found them in September 2026. Tools and registries change; where a link no longer resolves, search the operating body’s site directly. Nothing here is medical or legal advice, and none of these checks substitutes for an in-person consultation. See our Medical Disclaimer and Korean Clinic Verification Method.