When visiting South Korea, foreign tourists often indulge in K-food—especially chicken and other meat dishes—and many squeeze in dermatology and plastic-surgery appointments right before they fly home.
Orange Square, the company behind the foreigner-only payment platform WowPass, dug into 2025 transaction data to spot trends in K-food and K-beauty spending. By linking payments to passports, the study traced tourists’ real movements and purchase behavior.
Chicken topped the K-food charts: by total spend, BHC Chicken came in first, followed by whole-chicken specialty restaurants, traditional Korean dishes, ganjang gejang (soy-marinated crab), and yukhoe (seasoned raw beef).
Preferences varied by country. Visitors from Japan and North America leaned toward meat dishes, while tourists from Taiwan and Hong Kong ordered more eel. Chinese visitors favored gukbap (soup with rice), and German visitors showed a relatively high share of kimbap purchases. Breakfasts tended to be light, whereas lunch and dinner skewed heavily toward Korean fare.
K-beauty–related medical spending clustered later in trips: payments for dermatology and plastic surgery peaked just before departure. The spending hotspots also expanded beyond Gangnam to Mapo and Jung-gu — in 2025, Mapo and Jung-gu saw payment growth of 122% and 119%, respectively, outpacing Gangnam.
As hospital and clinic visits rose, pharmacy spending jumped 222% year-over-year, underscoring the ripple effect of medical tourism on related purchases.
