How Much Does Therapy Cost in South Korea? 2025 Guide

What therapy costs in South Korea in 2026

South Korea prices mental health care by which profession you see. A psychiatrist is covered by National Health Insurance, and you pay a published percentage of the bill: 30% at a neighbourhood clinic, more at bigger hospitals. A counsellor or psychologist outside the medical system is not covered at all, and the state's answer to that gap is a voucher worth up to ₩640,000 for eight sessions of professional counselling.

These are guiding estimates. Practitioners set their own fees.

The percentage ladder, published by the insurer

National Health Insurance works on co-payment percentages, and the insurer publishes them. For outpatient care you pay:

Where you are seen	Your share of the bill
Clinic (의원)	30%
Hospital (병원)	40%
General hospital	50% in urban areas, 45% in rural areas
Tertiary hospital	60%

Inpatient care is different: 20% of the treatment cost. The ladder is deliberate; the insurer's own explanation is that it exists to steer routine care toward clinics and away from the biggest hospitals.

Notice what this means for therapy: seeing a psychiatrist at a local clinic is the cheapest covered route into the system, and what you actually pay in won depends on what the clinic bills, not on a national price list. There is no published fee schedule for the visit itself.

The voucher: the state's route into counselling

Counselling by psychologists and counsellors sits outside National Health Insurance. Since July 2024 the government has funded a voucher programme for exactly this, and it was renamed for 2026: what launched as the All-Citizen Mind Investment Support Project is now the Mental Health Psychological Counselling Voucher Programme. If you read about "Mind Investment" somewhere, that is the same scheme, one name behind.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare publishes the mechanics:

• Eight sessions of professional one-to-one counselling, each at least 50 minutes.
• The voucher is worth ₩80,000 per session with a senior-grade (Type 1) counsellor, or ₩70,000 with a Type 2 counsellor.
• You pay an income-tiered share: 0%, 10%, 30% or 50%. At the top tier, eight Type 1 sessions cost you ₩320,000 in total; at the bottom tier, nothing.

You qualify through one of four gateways: a referral from a mental health or welfare centre, a referral from a psychiatric clinic for depression or anxiety, a PHQ-9 score of 10 or above in the national health screening, or being a young person leaving care. Applications run through the Bokjiro welfare portal or your district office, within the calendar year and until the budget runs out.

If the diagnosis is recent: the treatment-cost support programme

Korea runs a treatment-cost support programme that pays the patient share for defined groups, up to ₩4.5 million per person per year. The category most readers should know exists: early-stage mental illness, for people within five years of a diagnosis such as schizophrenia, a delusional disorder or a mood disorder, with household income at or below 120% of the median. Other categories cover psychiatric emergency care and post-admission outpatient treatment. The government's own guidance states that co-payments, and in defined cases non-covered charges, are supported. Ask about it wherever you are treated; it exists precisely for the years when treatment is most likely to lapse over money.

The question people ask quietly

Many people in Korea worry that seeing a psychiatrist creates a record. The factual position is simple: a visit billed to National Health Insurance enters your insurance record like any other medical care, and paying fully out of pocket keeps it off that record, which is a choice some patients make. Records of treatment are held as confidential health information, and a record of getting treated is not a diagnosis broadcast to the world. If the worry is what has kept you from going, it is worth raising it directly with the clinic; the question is common and clinics are used to it.

What we are not telling you

You will find pages online quoting exact private counselling prices in won, sometimes broken down by counsellor's degree or by city. We have no evidence any of that is real. No Korean professional body publishes a private fee schedule, and private fees are set practice by practice. The two numbers on this page that are certain are the ones the government itself publishes: the co-payment percentages and the voucher values. For any private practice, the reliable figure is the one the practice quotes you.

If you need someone now

• Mental health crisis counselling line: 1577-0199.
• Lifeline Korea: 1588-9191.
• Korea has also consolidated its suicide-prevention lines into a single short national number; the Ministry of Health and Welfare lists it.

Sources

• National Health Insurance Service, Insurance Benefits: the outpatient co-payment ladder and the inpatient rate. Read 28 July 2026.
• Ministry of Health and Welfare, Mental Health Psychological Counselling Voucher Programme: the eight sessions, the ₩80,000/₩70,000 voucher values, the income-tiered co-payments and the eligibility gateways. Read 28 July 2026.
• Seoul Metropolitan Government, counselling voucher guidance: the 50-minute one-to-one session format and the 2026 application window.
• Korea Easy Law (government legal information service), treatment-cost support for people with mental illness: the ₩4.5 million annual support limit, the early-stage category and the 120%-of-median income threshold. Read 28 July 2026.

Reviewed July 2026. The co-payment percentages and voucher values are the government's own published figures, read at source on 28 July 2026. We quote no private-sector won figures because none have a published source.