South Jeolla leads on hospital programs for foreign residents

A Sri Lankan national consults with a doctor at a hospital in Haenam, South Jeolla Province, July 20. Courtesy of South Jeolla Provincial Government

South Jeolla Province has launched the nation’s first program to designate hospitals that provide medical services tailored for foreign residents, aiming to improve access to care and ensure stable treatment for those living in the region.

With the province posting the fastest growth in foreign residents nationwide last year at 18.5 percent, the initiative is designed to ease medical costs and overcome language barriers that have long hindered timely and adequate care.

Among the province’s more than 60,000 registered foreign residents, over half of its foreign workers hold visa types that typically place them in physically demanding jobs, such as seasonal farming, fishing and seafaring. This high share of manual laborers, whose work often carries a greater risk of injury, has heightened the need for medical services suited to their work conditions and limited access to care.

The 71 designated hospitals, which began operating last month, provide foreign residents without national health insurance coverage access to medical services at prices comparable to those paid by insured patients.

“Foreign residents without national health insurance face far higher medical costs when treated. While giving them the same benefits as insured patients may slightly cut hospital revenue, we believed more foreigners would visit. And beyond that, we saw it as a contribution to society,” an official at Yeosu Hankook Hospital, one of the designated facilities for providing foreigner-focused services, told The Korea Times.

The hospital and the provincial government said the discount rate on medical service fees for foreign residents without national health insurance is generally about 30 percent, though the exact percentage may vary depending on circumstances.

Services are also in place to address language barriers. Telephone interpretation is available in 15 languages, including Vietnamese, Chinese, Khmer, Nepali, Indonesian and Filipino.

High medical costs and language barriers are the main reasons that many foreign residents in Korea avoid visiting hospitals.

A survey of 155 migrant parents last year by the Migration & Human Rights Institute found that the most frequently cited challenge when visiting medical facilities with their children was communication difficulties with medical staff, at 52 percent, followed by the burden of costs, at 45 percent.

A 2020 survey of 1,060 foreigners by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea found that 24.5 percent said they could not fully understand medical explanations without an interpreter, while over 90 percent reported clear understanding when interpretation services were provided.

This year, the number of registered foreign residents in South Jeolla Province topped 60,000 for the first time. While the figure ranks eighth among local governments nationwide in terms of registered foreign resident totals, the growth has been steep — up 83.2 percent over the past five years, more than double the national average increase of 36.2 percent.

The province plans to build an emergency medical system by collecting data on industrial accidents and infectious diseases among foreign workers.

“We hope operating these hospitals will allow foreign residents, who have struggled to access care due to costs and language barriers, to feel more at ease seeking treatment,” said Kim Myung-shin, head of the Population, Youth and Immigration Bureau of South Jeolla Province. “We will continue to strengthen cooperative medical support systems to close gaps in care.”