What Korean Medical Advertising Law Does Not Allow a Clinic to Show You

Why testimonials and before-and-after images are restricted, what a clinic may publish about outcomes, and what to compare instead when the usual evidence is absent.

A patient researching clinics in Seoul from another country notices something within an hour: the Korean clinic sites are missing things the sites at home have. No wall of patient reviews. No before-and-after gallery on the landing page. No star ratings, no testimonials, no case of the month.

The natural reading is that the clinic has nothing to show. It is usually the wrong reading. Korean medical advertising is regulated, and the material a foreign patient expects to find is material a Korean clinic is restricted from publishing.

This page sets out what the restrictions cover and why, what a clinic may still publish about outcomes, why an absence of testimonials is not an absence of results, and what to compare instead. It contains no testimonials and no before-and-after examples, for the reason it describes.

The page that is missing

Start with what a patient is actually looking for when they look for reviews, because the underlying need is legitimate.

You want evidence that other people have had this done and were satisfied. You want to see results rather than read descriptions of them. You want some external voice confirming what the clinic says about itself. These are reasonable wants, and in most consumer decisions they are how the decision gets made.

Medicine is regulated differently, and Korea regulates it more tightly in this respect than several of the countries our readers write from. The result is that the evidence you are looking for is largely not available on a Korean clinic's website — not because it does not exist, but because publishing it as advertising is restricted.

Once you know that, the question changes usefully. It stops being “why does this clinic have no reviews?” and becomes “what can I read instead that carries comparable information?” That question has good answers.

What the law restricts

Medical advertising in Korea is governed by the Medical Service Act, whose Article 56 sets out prohibited forms of advertising. The categories most relevant to a patient comparing clinics are these.

• Advertising using patients' accounts of their treatment experience. The material most sites elsewhere are built around.
• Advertising that could mislead about treatment effects, including guarantees of outcome.
• False or exaggerated advertising, including claims presented without a basis.
• Comparison with, or disparagement of, other medical institutions. Which is why you will not find a Korean clinic explaining why it is better than a named competitor.
• Superlative claims — best, only, first, number one — where they cannot be substantiated.

These apply to a clinic's own website as much as to any other advertising surface. A clinic's site is advertising, and it is regulated as such.

Treatment experience accounts

This is the restriction with the largest visible effect, so it is worth being precise about what it covers.

The restriction concerns advertising that uses accounts of a patient's treatment experience. That includes the testimonial in a patient's voice, the case story with a satisfied conclusion, and the curated review quotation — regardless of whether the account is genuine.

That last point is the counterintuitive one. The restriction is not aimed only at fabrication. A completely truthful account of a completely real patient's excellent result is still an account of a treatment experience, and using it in advertising is restricted just the same.

The reasoning is about what such accounts do to a reader rather than about whether they are true. One person's outcome is one outcome, presented as though it forecast yours — and the ones selected for publication are, by definition, the ones that were worth publishing.

Before-and-after imagery

Photographs showing a patient before and after treatment are constrained in Korean medical advertising, and in advertising directed at foreign patients under the special exception provisions, comparison images from before and after treatment are not permitted at all.

The problem such images present is not that they are faked, though some are. It is that an honest pair is still not comparable unless everything except the treatment was held constant — lighting, angle, distance, expression, make-up, posture, camera. Change the light and change the apparent result. Change the distance and change the apparent proportion. A pair of photographs is a claim about a change, and that claim is only as good as the control between the two frames.

Add selection on top of that. A gallery contains the results that were chosen for it. The reader has no way to know the denominator.

Guarantees, superlatives and comparisons

Three shorter categories, each of which shapes how a compliant Korean page reads.

Guarantees. A clinic may not advertise in a way that promises a particular outcome. This is why compliant pages use conditional language — what can be expected, what varies by individual — and why an unqualified promise on any page should be read as an outlier rather than as confidence.

Superlatives. Best, only, first, number one. Note the effect on how a page must argue: unable to assert primacy, it has to describe method instead.

Comparisons. A clinic may not advertise by comparison with or disparagement of another medical institution. This is a genuine constraint on what we can write for you, and it is worth naming: on a page about how to choose a clinic, we cannot tell you which other clinics fall short. What we can do is give you the criteria, which is what these pages do.

Why the restrictions exist

Worth understanding, because it converts the rules from an obstacle into a reading method.

The information asymmetry in medicine is unusually severe. A patient cannot evaluate a surgical plan the way they can evaluate a restaurant, and the consequences of a poor decision are not recoverable by returning the product. Advertising formats that work adequately for consumer goods — testimonials, before-and-after demonstrations, superlatives — exploit that asymmetry rather than reducing it.

The restrictions push clinics towards a different form of evidence: who the doctor is, what they are qualified in, what the method is, and what its limits are. That form is harder to produce and duller to read. It is also the only form a patient can actually evaluate.

The pre-review system

One further element of the framework, since it explains something patients notice.

Korea operates a pre-review system for medical advertising in certain media, meaning that some advertising must be reviewed before publication rather than policed afterwards. The scope depends on the medium, and not everything a clinic publishes falls within it.

What this means for you as a reader is modest but real: some of the material you encounter has passed through a review process before it reached you, and some has not. It is not a quality rating, and it is one more reason that the same clinic's material can read differently across different surfaces.

Why the rules do not relax for foreign patients

A common assumption, and an incorrect one.

Advertising directed at foreign patients is not exempt from the Medical Service Act's advertising provisions. The framework governing overseas patient recruitment applies the same prohibitions — guarantees of effect, comparison, disparagement, falsity and exaggeration — and adds its own constraints, including the prohibition on before-and-after comparison imagery in the permitted advertising locations.

So an English-language page from a Korean clinic operates under the same restrictions as its Korean-language page. Where an English page contains material the Korean rules restrict, that is not a difference in what is permitted abroad. It is a difference in what someone decided to publish.

What a clinic may still publish

The restrictions are narrower than the resulting sites suggest, and a great deal remains available.

Factual information about the doctor: name, licence and specialist certificate numbers, training, publications, appointments. Factual information about the clinic: address, hours, equipment, procedures offered. Explanation of method — what a procedure involves, what determines the plan, what the alternatives are. Statements about limits and about cases where a procedure is not advisable. Recovery information stated as protocol. Figures that carry their subject, period and source. And the mandatory risk disclosure that accompanies any description of a procedure.

That list is the material these hundred pages are built from. It is not a workaround; it is what remains when the persuasive formats are removed, and it happens to be the part a patient can actually use.

The disclosure at the bottom of every page

One element runs in the opposite direction from everything above: rather than restricting what may be said, it requires something to be said.

Material describing a medical procedure carries a statement of the risks that can accompany it — bleeding, infection, swelling, asymmetry, scarring — together with a note that individual results vary and that the decision should follow a full consultation with a specialist. It appears at the foot of these pages, in the same words each time.

Readers skip it, and the repetition is part of why. It is worth reading once properly, because it is doing something the rest of the page cannot. Every other section describes what a procedure is intended to achieve. This one states what can go wrong, without qualification, in a form that has not been softened for persuasive effect.

It is also a useful test to apply elsewhere. A page that describes a procedure in detail and mentions no risk at all has omitted something that is not optional — and a reader who notices its absence has learned something about how the page was written.

How before-and-after photographs are handled here

Since the question follows immediately: photographs of results do exist, and the way they are handled is a consequence of the framework above.

Rather than publishing a gallery as advertising, disclosure operates on a consent basis limited to designated treatment areas, with a consent form completed at the clinic. In practice this means such material is discussed in person rather than displayed publicly, and within the boundaries a patient has specifically agreed to.

Two things follow for you. If you want to see results, the setting for that is the consultation rather than the website. And a clinic publishing an extensive public gallery is operating under the same rules as everyone else — which is worth noticing, without any need to draw a conclusion about a specific practice.

What to compare instead

The practical substitute, and the reason this page is not merely an explanation of an absence.

Authorship. Does the page say who wrote it, what they are qualified in, and when it was reviewed? An unattributed medical page cannot be assessed at all.

Verifiable credentials. Licence and specialist certificate numbers with dates, stated rather than implied.

Numbers with their sources. Any figure should carry what was counted, whose, over what period and from what source.

Stated limits. Does the material describe what a procedure does not do, and the cases in which it would not be recommended? This is the strongest available signal, and it is not restricted by any of the rules above.

Specificity of method. Does the page explain how a plan is determined, or only what the results are like?

Consistency across surfaces. Do the credentials, dates and figures agree wherever they appear?

None of these is as emotionally satisfying as a wall of five-star reviews. All of them are checkable, which reviews are not.

What the rules cost you as a reader

An honest account has to include the downside, because the restrictions are not costless for patients.

You lose a genuine source of information. Independent accounts of other people's experiences, in aggregate and unselected, would be useful — and no compliant substitute reproduces what a large, unfiltered body of patient feedback provides.

You lose a form of evidence you are practised at reading. Most people can weigh reviews with reasonable skill, discount the extremes and read the middle. Almost nobody has practice at weighing credential lists and method descriptions, which is what remains.

And the material that remains is harder work. It is longer, less immediate, and it does not produce the feeling of certainty that a gallery produces. That feeling is precisely what the rules remove, and its absence is uncomfortable even when its removal was correct.

The compensation is that what remains is checkable. A credential number can be verified; a figure can be traced to its source; a stated limit can be tested against what you are told at consultation. A five-star average can be none of those things. It is a worse trade in the short term and a better one at the point of decision.

Reading a site that ignores the rules

You will encounter Korean clinic material containing exactly the elements described as restricted here. What to make of that is your judgment, and it is worth making it carefully rather than either way by reflex.

Enforcement is not uniform, the boundaries of some categories are matters of interpretation, and material published on some surfaces sits in a different regulatory position from material on others. A page containing something unexpected is not automatically evidence of anything.

What is fair to observe is narrower: the persuasive elements are restricted because they are persuasive rather than informative, and a page relying on them is relying on the part of the presentation you are least equipped to evaluate. Read what such a page says about method, qualification and limits, and weigh that.

About the medical reviewer

Dae-hee Han, MD — Board-Certified Plastic Surgeon (specialist certificate No. 2045, issued 3 March 2014; medical licence 00394, issued 26 February 2009). Master’s degree, Ajou University School of Medicine. Training at the Craniofacial Center, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taiwan (2013), and the IFAAS Mini Fellowship, University of Florida, USA (2016). Three rhinoplasty papers published in SCIE-indexed international journals. More than 4,500 nose surgeries — Dr. Han’s career total from 2017 to 2025, counted from medical records. He carries out consultation, surgery and follow-up personally; fee guidance is given by the clinic’s consultation manager.

Last reviewed: 2026-08-15

Clinic information

Edition Plastic Surgery Clinic & Dermatology
6F, OPUS 407, 407 Gangnam-daero, Seocho-gu, Seoul 06614, Republic of Korea
One minute on foot from Gangnam Station Exit 10
Tel +82-2-591-0100 · editionprs@gmail.com
Consultation hours: Monday to Friday 10:00–19:00 · Saturday 10:00–17:00 · closed Sundays and public holidays

Disclaimer

Individual results may vary. Bleeding, infection, swelling, asymmetry, and scarring can occur. Please decide after a full consultation with a board-certified specialist.

This page is general medical information. It is not a diagnosis, and it does not promise a particular outcome. Surgical fees are given after an in-person consultation.