My experience getting PRP, eye Thermage, RF microneedling + Botox and body ONDA in Seoul
I just spent 72 hours in Seoul and thought I’d write this up because I did an embarrassing amount of research before choosing where to get treatments.
About me: female, 30s, live full-time in Asia and get aesthetic treatments fairly regularly. This was my first trip to Korea.
I wasn’t looking for the cheapest possible treatments. My priority was finding somewhere that wasn’t a factory clinic, where I could actually speak to the doctor doing my treatments and feel comfortable with their experience.
I ended up going to two clinics: POEN for body treatments and The Garden for my face.
POEN
I only did body treatments here, but I would recommend it. It isn’t factory-style and the majority of the clients there I saw were Korean. Dr. Choi speaks excellent English and has a lovely bedside manner.
I paid around $2,000 USD for 335KJ of ONDA body treatment, which felt fair for Seoul given the clinic quality and doctor involvement.
Pricing is competitive but not cheap. Also, this isn’t a luxury clinic in terms of the physical environment. There’s a shared locker/changing room, and in the treatment room there were stacked storage boxes of product, nothing spa like. It’s very much midrange in feel. You are paying for the medical treatment and device time rather than aesthetics or luxury surroundings, which I was fine with.
Side note they were behind and I ended up waiting, after 15 minutes the offered me a complimentary IV drip or facial treatment for the delay. Very kind of them.
I would recommend POEN for body treatments and more routine aesthetic treatments. For more complex facial work, I personally preferred a dermatologist-led setting.
THE GARDEN
This was where I did all of my facial treatments.
The Garden is very new. It opened in 2026 and is run by two sisters who are both doctors.
One Dr. Park, who is featured on their website, is a certified board dermatologist with around 11 years of experience. This is important and and I go into more detail below. Her sister, also Dr. Park, has short hair and comes from an internal-medicine background. She oversees more of the regenerative medicine side of the practice, including their stem-cell-related treatments, IVs, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, etc.
Both speak excellent English.
I will say upfront: because the clinic is so new, you can feel it in some of the operational details.
I waited longer than expected at the beginning, we didn’t go through the facial-analysis results and did this only after treatment, and there were a few small things around preparation for a long treatment day that could have been smoother (gown hung in the closest instead of asking me change, etc)
None of that impacted the way I felt about the medical treatment however. I was clear that I wanted a natural look, I didn’t want to use chemicals or filler, and am focused on regenerative therapies as opposed to Rejuran (they have this as well of course). Dr. Park weighed all of this and proposed a plan.
WHAT I HAD DONE
Full-face PRP
Under-eye PRP
Eye Thermage
RF microneedling
Botox
I had Sofwave about a month earlier, so I specifically didn’t want another full-face tightening treatment. We kept the Thermage to the eye area.
Also IV therapy drip during treatments and hyperbaric chamber 30mins.
The standout for me was the PRP.
Dr. Park was extremely thorough and treated different depths/areas using multiple techniques rather than just injecting PRP superficially across my face. There were injections, microinjections and deeper placement depending on the area, followed by ultrasound as part of the protocol.
It was A LOT.
By the time we got to Botox at the very end, I had been pricked so many times and my face was so red that I genuinely thought I might not make it through another needle 😂.
Dr. Park walked me through every procedure as they started, was very thorough, and answered my 1million questions throughout. She was honestly a great doctor. This made me more comfortable as we layered treatments, which is something I’ve not done before.
They did a cryo facial and masks afterwards, and somehow by the time I walked out I actually looked relatively normal. I flew about 8 hours later and while It’s slightly noticeable at (day 2) I’m able to join work calls today with no worries.
I’m slightly questioning my hyperbaric session because the oxygen mask seemed to be wonky on only one side, so I wouldn’t personally factor that into the value of the treatment. Interesting experience though.
What I really liked about The Garden was that they seem interested in combining aesthetic treatments with internal/regenerative health rather than treating the face completely in isolation.
The treatment rooms are also private, with big comfortable beds and nice bedding, which matters more than you think when you’re spending HOURS getting things done to your face.
There’s also a very good Korean pharmacy directly downstairs, so you can pick up anything you need afterwards.
PRICING / UPSELLING
I paid around $3,200 USD at The Garden for my full treatment plan.
Also a practical tip: ask for a weekday discount. Lots of clinics offer this actually, and it can make a meaningful difference on a multi-treatment day.
Pricing is on the higher end for Korea. Personally, I’m fine with that when it comes to my face.
The actual consultation with the doctor didn’t feel like an upsell at all. The separate pricing consultation can be more sales-y.
My advice would just be: take your time.
You don’t need to decide immediately because someone has put a package in front of you. I was literally checking things on ChatGPT while I was there to sanity-check whether the proposed combinations/doses/pricing made sense. I asked questions and Dr. Park (internal med who did the final treatment plan/pricing) helped walk me through the cheaper options and what the difference would be. We started close to $7K and landed at $4K for the final plan and I’m happy with the treatments.
A NOTE ON DERMATOLOGISTS IN KOREA
This was probably the biggest thing I learned while researching clinics. A Korean aesthetic/skin clinic is not automatically being run by a board-certified dermatologist.
There are many doctors practicing aesthetic medicine who are not dermatologists, and there are obviously very good aesthetic doctors who aren’t dermatologists. But personally, I’m conservative about who touches my face.
Your face has nerves, blood vessels, fat compartments, etc., and once we’re talking about injections, RF devices and combining multiple treatments, I want someone who understands the anatomy extremely well and can also deal with a complication if something goes wrong.
This is personal preference - I don’t use non- derm doctors in my home country for my routine Botox and laser treatments.
So for me, paying more for a dermatologist-led clinic in Seoul was an easy decision. Having two doctors onsite made me feel really secure.
OVERALL
I would highly recommend The Garden based on my experience so far.
It’s newer and still has some logistical kinks to work out, but those were minor compared with how comfortable I felt with Dr. Park(s)and the medical team.
I never felt like they were trying to throw every device in the clinic at my face. In fact, because I’d recently had Sofwave, we specifically avoided doing full-face Thermage and only treated my eyes.
Obviously I can’t review the RESULTS properly yet, but I’ll come back and update this in about three months once everything has had enough time to actually work.
If anyone is planning a Seoul treatment trip, happy to share more about pricing, the consultation, or what I’d do differently next time.