Members of a tattoist union hold a protest calling for the legalization of tattooing by non-medical personnel in front of Daegu District Court, May 9. Yonhap

Eight out of 10 Koreans who have tattoos believe it is appropriate to get a tattoo at a shop rather than a hospital, a survey showed, Sunday.

Only 14.6 percent said it is appropriate to get tattooed at hospitals and clinics. In addition, more than half of the respondents said nonmedical personnel should be allowed to perform tattoo procedures.

According to the Korean health and welfare ministry's survey, more than half of 1,685 people with tattoos or semipermanent makeup agreed to allow nonmedical personnel to perform the procedure.

The survey was conducted in August last year with 500 people who have tattoos, 1,444 users of semipermanent makeup, or cosmetic tattooing, and 259 who have experienced both procedures.

In Korea, tattooing is by law “an act of medical service” and tattooing by nonmedical personnel is subject to punishment.

However, as the survey result showed 54.2 percent of respondents said that tattooing by nonmedical personnel should be allowed, primarily because "most nonmedical personnel are already performing tattooing and they need further management by being included into legal institutionalization."

The following major reasons included "because safe procedures are possible even if they do not have doctor-level expertise" (24.0 percent), and "it is difficult to find a hospital where tattooing is possible and because they want to get it from a professional operator rather than a doctor" (22.1 percent).

About half of those who received cosmetic tattoos also said that nonmedical personnel should be allowed to perform the procedure.

According to the health ministry, there are about 13 million people with tattoos and about 350,000 tattoo artists in Korea.

Currently, the majority of tattoo users are found to have received the procedure at a nonmedical institution. In the case of tattoo procedures, 81 percent of the respondents said they had received the procedure at a tattoo shop, while 52.6 percent said they had received the procedure at a beauty facility.

Meanwhile, only 1.4 percent of tattoos and 6.8 percent of cosmetic tattoo users went through the practice at medical institutions.

Even among those, most, or 42.9 percent had the practice done by "nonmedical personnel" and only 14.3 percent had their tattoos done by doctors.

In addition, 81.6 percent of the respondents said it is appropriate to get a tattoo at a tattoo shop, in contrast to only 14.6 and 3 percent who chose hospitals and beauty facilities, respectively.

Rep. Park Ju-min of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea proposed a bill last month that called for the legalization of tattooing by tattoo artists.

Six similar legislations were also proposed in the 21st National Assembly, but all were discarded.