Yes, travel insurance is worth carrying for a trip through Incheon, though the honest reason has less to do with medical danger than with cost and connections. South Korea has excellent, genuinely modern hospital care by any standard, but that care is not free for foreign visitors, and Incheon's role as one of Asia's busiest transit hubs adds a real trip-disruption angle on top of the medical question. Even a short layover through Incheon benefits from basic trip-disruption cover, given how tightly onward connections are often scheduled.
Modern care is widely available in Seoul and across the country, so the risk here is not about facility quality - it is about the bill. Costs for foreigners without local insurance can be substantial even for routine treatment, and a policy that covers hospital costs directly, rather than one that only reimburses you later, spares you from paying upfront in an unfamiliar system. This is a cost and paperwork issue rather than a quality issue, and it is worth planning for accordingly.
Incheon functions as a major connecting point for onward flights across Asia and beyond, so missed connections, delayed baggage, and overnight layovers are a genuinely common source of claims here, more so than illness or injury. Many visitors also book organized tours to the DMZ from Seoul, which occasionally face short-notice access changes; check that your policy covers both trip-disruption and any prepaid tour you cannot rebook. Confirm any DMZ tour operator's cancellation policy alongside your own insurance, since the two do not always align.
Keep hospital invoices, prescription receipts, and any airline documentation for delays or missed connections, since Korean providers and carriers generally issue standard paperwork on request. Check whether your policy pays hospitals directly or requires you to pay first and claim later, and confirm the trip-disruption benefit covers layovers and missed connections specifically, not just outright flight cancellation.