Drug Ministry Cracks Down on Propofol Shopping After Patients Receive ‘Milk Shots’ 29 Times a Year

On Aug. 26, 2026, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety referred 13 medical institutions suspected of habitual propofol misuse and 13 patients to police for investigation. The patients referred for investigation were found to have visited an average of six medical institutions and received propofol an average of 29 times over 1 year. At the same time, the ministry announced that it would begin implementing a propofol medication history verification system the following day, Aug. 27, as part of efforts to block such practices institutionally.

The cases uncovered included extreme misuse. One patient visited 13 hospitals and received propofol 54 times over 1 year, while one medical institution administered the drug to a single patient 36 times in 1 year, reportedly for purposes including skin-whitening procedures. In most cases, propofol was administered for skin procedures or plastic surgery.

Propofol is a widely known sedative anesthetic in South Korea, where it is colloquially called a “milk shot.” In Western countries, the drug is strictly controlled in operating rooms at large hospitals, but in South Korea it has been widely used for simple cosmetic procedures at local dermatology and plastic surgery clinics. Critics say this environment has enabled propofol addiction through cosmetic procedures.

■ A paradoxical loophole created by access to medical care

South Korea’s high level of access to medical care and concentration of clinics and hospitals have paradoxically created fertile ground for medical shopping. Structural loopholes allowed people with addictions to easily move between multiple hospitals in a single day to obtain prescriptions, while individual medical institutions had no means of checking patients’ medication histories at other hospitals in real time. As of 2023, approximately 19.91 million patients in South Korea were prescribed medical narcotics, meaning that about 1 in every 2.56 people received such prescriptions and underscoring the enormous scale of prescribing.

■ A “pop-up alert” will appear in prescribing programs

The medication history verification system taking effect Aug. 27 directly targets this loophole. When a physician prescribes propofol, the patient’s medication history for the previous year will be immediately displayed as a pop-up in the electronic medical record (EMR) program. The system expands coverage to propofol after fentanyl, ADHD medications and zolpidem, using big data accumulated in the Narcotics Information Management System (NIMS) in real time. “We will continue to strengthen inspections of medical shopping by analyzing the big data accumulated in NIMS from multiple angles,” Oh Yu-kyung, minister of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, said.

Some in the medical community, however, have raised concerns that requiring clinicians to check medication histories for every prescription in busy clinical settings, such as emergencies and surgeries, would constitute excessive regulation in practice. Industry experts say guidelines should be refined alongside the system’s initial implementation to minimize confusion in the field.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety also plans to strengthen administrative and criminal penalties, through local governments and police, against medical institutions that divert propofol by falsifying inventory levels or medical records, as well as against patients who misuse the drug. The ministry plans to gradually expand mandatory medication history checks beyond propofol to other medical narcotics, including fentanyl and appetite suppressants, suggesting that the national system for controlling narcotics will become more comprehensive.