Divide 459,521 by 0.350 and dermatology's implied total lands near 1.31 million, which against 2,011,822 patients is roughly 65% of everyone Korea counted [7][1][2]. Run the same operation on plastic surgery, 97,847 at 42.0%, and you get about 233,000 [8][3]. On ophthalmology, where Mongolia's 4,925 patients are 22.0% of the field, about 22,400 [9][4]. So the treatment-oriented business that industry officials describe, the LASIK and spinal disc and cancer work [14], is running at something like one fifty-ninth of the skin clinics [5].
The more interesting version of the concentration story sits in the spending table, which the report presents without labelling the period it covers [16]. China at about 57.7bn won, the United States at about 44bn, Japan at about 28.5bn, Taiwan at about 25.3bn and Singapore at about 6.4bn sum to 161.9bn [13][8], which fits inside July's 213.08bn total [12], so read it as roughly a month. On that reading Japan supplies 29.8% of the patients and 17.6% of the money [5][9], while the United States supplies 8.6% and 27.2% [6][10]: per head, about 2.7 times China's yield and 5.4 times Japan's [12][13]. Annual headcounts set against one month of spending is not an audited comparison, and if the breakdown turns out to cover a longer window those ratios move.
That reframes the country risk rather than dissolving it. China and Japan are 1,218,982 patients, or 60.6% of the total [6], but on the yield arithmetic they are the volume, not the margin, and a booking decision that reaches 459,521 dermatology visits [7] takes out chair time in Gangnam rather than a high-ticket surgical line. Three ways this goes differently. The base effect is doing work: 2,011,822 at 71.9% growth implies a 2024 total of 1,170,344, so last year added about 841,000 patients [7], and if that was route and visa normalisation the next comparison is flat by construction. The penetration ratio may keep carrying it: 106.2 patients per 1,000 inbound visitors implies roughly 18.9 million arrivals, 10.6% of whom touched a medical institution [11][14][15], and that ratio rising means growth without more tourists. Or Chinese per-patient spend climbs through packages and repeat visits, at which point headcount concentration becomes revenue concentration and the hedge gets harder.
This is probably wrong in one direction, but the number I would underwrite against is not 2,011,822. Four months at 249.86bn, 251.16bn, 250.83bn and 213.08bn average 241.2bn a month, an annual run rate near 2.9tn won [12][18], and 86.8% of it is booked in Seoul [15]. The 13.2% left over [16] is about 33bn won of a 250.83bn June [17], spread across every hospital outside the capital that has been told foreign patients are a growth industry. Seoul's clinics own a two-country discretionary flow with, on these figures, the lowest revenue per visit in the mix; the rest of the country owns a rounding error and the policy language.
What would falsify the read: a KHIDI breakdown showing per-patient dermatology spend for Chinese and Japanese visitors at or above the American average, which would mean the volume cohorts are not the low-yield cohorts and the whole yield argument collapses.
