By Kim Rahn
Police have booked nine unlicensed brokers who allegedly referred Chinese patients to plastic surgery clinics.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) said Wednesday that it booked two Chinese and seven Koreans without physical detention on suspicion of violating the Medical Law.
The suspects allegedly connected about 60 Chinese tourists with two famous plastic surgery clinics in Gangnam, southern Seoul, from April 2014 to May 2015. They are suspected of having taken a 10 to 50 percent cut of the surgery fees as commission, 93.1 million won.
According to the law, attracting foreign patients is permitted only by licensed brokers who maintain an office here with a capital investment of more than 100 million won and take out related insurance. But the nine unlicensed brokers referred the foreign patients illegally, police said.
“As competition to attract foreign patients was growing among clinics, the illegal brokers demanded excessive commissions, up to 50 percent of the surgery fees,” an SMPA official said. “The high commissions thus pushed up the medical fees overall, and the patients were overcharged,” he said.
To evade law enforcement authorities, they used mobile phones registered under the names of ethnic Chinese-Koreans who had left Korea, according to police.
“We suspect they had been engaged in illegal brokerage activities before we discovered them during the period of 2014-2015, so we are continuing to question them,” the official said.
Illegal brokerages and overcharging patients have been thorny problems for Korea’s medical tourism industry. Police also added to the wanted list another four Chinese who entered Korea in 2007 on student visas but worked as illegal brokers for five years beginning in 2010 after their visas expired.