The government has pledged to accelerate the Korean Wave in the medical industry and increase the number of foreign patients at local hospitals by more than 40 percent.

It also plans to give more support to local hospitals making inroads into the global market.

Reporting its New Year plan to President Park Geun-hye, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Monday that it aims to increase the number of foreigners visiting local hospitals to 400-thousand this year from last year's 280-thousand.

To that end, the ministry said it will reimburse ten percent of a value-added tax to visitors who get plastic surgery or dermatology treatment at a local hospital during the one-year period beginning in April.

Foreign-language advertisements of local medical institutions or services will also be allowed beginning in June, but they will be confined to airports and tax-free shops. 

The ministry also hopes to reduce medical accidents involving foreign patients, and vowed to strengthen monitoring of brokers who illicitly deal with visitors.

It will also encourage local hospitals to subscribe to liability insurance policies to ensure that foreign patients will get due compensation in case of a medical accident.

The ministry is also working to make medical services provided by local hospitals more available in foreign countries, aiming to increase the number of local medical institutions operating overseas by more than ten to 155 this year. 

Medical services for locals will also be enhanced. The ministry said it will almost double the number of participants in pilot projects to establish a telemedicine system in remote regions to ten-thousand this year. 

It also plans to encourage more exchanges between medical institutions of diagnostic information of patients, such as Computed Tomography(CT) scans and Magnetic Resonance Imaging(MRI) scans in order to help reduce the patients’ medical costs stemming from redundant diagnoses as well as enhance the precision of the treatment.

In addition to the medical industry, the Health Ministry announced plans to foster local pharmaceutical and bio-healthcare industries.

First, it will create a 150 billion-won fund to foster a firm similar to Hanmi Pharm, which closed a mega-export deal with Paris-based global drug maker Sanofi in November 2015.

The ministry said it will also try to create 50-thousand jobs and generate trillion won in added economic value in the bio-healthcare industry, as well as expand the size of the local bio-healthcare industry to the world’s seventh largest from the current 12th ranking.