For a cold in Korea, should I go to an ENT clinic or an internal medicine clinic?
I am from Uzbekistan, living in Busan on an E-7 visa. Now that the season has turned my throat hurts and I have a cough, and there is an ENT clinic and an internal medicine clinic side by side near my apartment, so I cannot work out which door to walk into.
I am enrolled in national health insurance through my employer. Roughly what will the visit cost, and do I get the medicine at the clinic itself or at a separate pharmacy?
1 Answer
If the sore throat and blocked nose are the main problem, walk into the ENT clinic. Both will treat a cold, but an ENT (이비인후과) looks directly inside your throat and nose with a scope and can give treatments like a nebuliser on the spot, which makes it the faster option for throat and sinus symptoms. Go to internal medicine (내과) instead if you have a fever and body aches alongside it, or if the cough has been going for more than two weeks — they will listen to your chest and, if needed, order a chest X-ray or blood work to rule out something other than a cold.
Since you are enrolled in national health insurance through your employer, an outpatient visit to a neighbourhood clinic carries a 30 percent co-payment. A straightforward consultation for a cold usually comes in under KRW 10,000, but tests that insurance does not cover — a rapid influenza test, for example — are billed in full and push the total up. If a test is suggested, it is entirely normal to ask at the desk whether it is covered before agreeing to it.
You will not get the medicine at the clinic. Korea separates prescribing from dispensing, so the doctor issues a prescription and you take it to a nearby pharmacy, where the medication is billed separately from the consultation. In practice this means the pharmacy's closing time matters more than the clinic's — arriving at a clinic at 18:30 is no use if every pharmacy around it shuts at 19:00.
Bring your alien registration card when you register at the desk. If your insurance status cannot be verified on the spot, you will have to pay the full amount and claim it back afterwards, which is a far slower process than it sounds. For questions about coverage or contributions, the National Health Insurance Service can be reached on 1577-1000, and their site is nhis.or.kr.
If symptoms worsen at night or over a holiday, the emergency medical portal E-Gen (e-gen.or.kr) lists clinics and pharmacies currently open, searchable by area. Several larger hospitals in Busan operate international patient desks, so if explaining symptoms in Korean feels difficult, it is worth calling ahead to ask whether interpretation support is available before you go.