What Is Koreas Plastic Surgery Market Worth?
While there can be little doubt that Korea’s plastic surgery market is booming, it is difficult to get a handle on the exact size of the market. One reason is that most aesthetic surgery is not covered by health insurance and thus not included in official Health Ministry statistics. And many plastic surgeons massage their sales to dodge taxes, making it difficult to trust statistics provided by the National Tax Service (NTS). Acording to the NTS, 1,231 beauty clinics earned nearly W447.6 billion (US$1=W1,179) in 2008, but an NTS official says, “Many individual clinics don’t fully reveal their sales. The volume of the plastic surgery market probably far exceeds W450 billion given that big hospitals also do plastic surgery.” Experts say the volume of the domestic plastic surgery market is at least W1 trillion. According to the Korean Association of Plastic Surgeons, there were 1,611 plastic surgeons in Korea as of September. A veteran plastic surgeon who operates in the affluent southern
