Commercial disclosure

Visit Korea Medical is a commercial publication operated by HEIM GLOBAL, a Seoul-based medical-tourism facilitator registered with the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) under registration number A-2026-04-02-06873. Some elements of this site involve commercial relationships; others do not. This page sets out what is sponsored, what is not, and how editorial independence is preserved across the boundary. The disclosures below apply across the site; individual pages may carry additional, page-specific disclosures.

Facilitator relationship with Korean clinics

HEIM GLOBAL operates as a KHIDI-registered medical-tourism facilitator under Article 56 (4) of the Korean Medical Service Act. In some cases we hold formal facilitator relationships with Korean clinics, under which a referral fee is paid by the clinic when an international patient arrives via our channels. Where this relationship exists, the relevant page carries a disclosure block and the outbound link is marked rel="sponsored". The presence or absence of a facilitator relationship does not determine whether a clinic appears in our editorial coverage. Editorial inclusion is decided by our editorial board on professional criteria; commercial relationships are disclosed but not editorially weighted.

Publisher-network outbound links

Visit Korea Medical is part of a publisher network — a set of specialised English-language editorial archives operated alongside this handbook, covering specific treatment platforms (stem cell, Ultherapy PRIME, Thermage FLX, Sofwave) and specific Korean cities and districts (Gangnam, Myeongdong, Incheon Airport, Seoul, Korea-wide). Outbound links to these archives carry the rel="sponsored noopener" attribute, consistent with W3C and Google guidance for paid or related-publication relationships. The archives are editorial publications in their own right, but they sit inside the same commercial structure as this handbook.

Authority and reference outbound links

Authority outbound links — to KHIDI, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Korea Tourism Organization, the Korean Society of Dermatology, manufacturer pages — are not commercial. They are linked because they are the primary public source for the claim being made on the page. We do not receive payment for authority links. Where an authority page is the basis for a factual claim, we link directly so that the reader can verify.

What we do not do

We do not publish paid placements disguised as editorial coverage. We do not publish under invented author identities. We do not invent patient testimonials or before-and-after outcomes. We do not publish numerical clinic rankings ("#1 best clinic in Korea") in our copy or our schema. We do not advertise specific licensed Korean physicians by name in headline form. We do not name unlicensed practices or unregistered facilitators as if they were registered. Where any of these rules is in tension with what a clinic asks us to publish, the rule wins.

Frequently asked questions

Are sponsored links labelled?

Yes. Outbound links to our publisher-network archives carry the rel="sponsored noopener" attribute. Pages with significant commercial relationships also carry a visible disclosure block.

Do you receive money from clinics for editorial coverage?

No. Editorial inclusion is decided on professional criteria and is independent of commercial relationships. Where a referral fee arrangement exists for a particular clinic, this is disclosed on the relevant page; the disclosure does not determine whether the clinic is covered.

Do you list clinics that have asked not to be listed?

Generally no. Where a clinic asks to be removed and our editorial board cannot identify a strong public-interest reason to retain coverage, we remove the page. Where a public-interest reason exists (e.g. a documented safety incident), we may decline removal and note the disagreement.

What if I disagree with how my clinic is covered?

Send a right-of-reply submission to [email protected]. Where the underlying claim is in dispute, we add a quoted response on the page rather than overwriting the original copy. See the editorial policy for the full procedure.