Korea hospice use rises for third year as 26,020 new patients enrolled in 2025

South Korea's health ministry said Thursday that 26,020 patients newly began using hospice and palliative care in 2025, up 1,702, or 6.9 percent, from 24,318 a year earlier, extending a three-year run of increases.

By the end of 2025, 194 institutions were providing hospice services, six more than a year earlier — 104 inpatient facilities, 40 home-based programs, 44 consultation services and six nursing-hospital units.

Public awareness of hospice care also edged higher. In the ministry's survey, 83.2 percent of respondents said they had heard of hospice, up 2.8 percentage points from 80.4 percent a year earlier, while 89.9 percent said such care was necessary and 93.1 percent said they would be willing to use it. Satisfaction among users of specialist hospice institutions reached 94.7 percent, compared with 94.3 percent the previous year.

The separate report on life-sustaining treatment decisions showed 499,961 people registered an advance directive in 2025, bringing the cumulative total to 3,201,958 since the system was introduced in February 2018. Registrations of formal treatment plans, which set out a patient's wishes in more detail, totaled 29,557 for the year and 185,952 cumulatively.

Decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment were carried out 81,220 times in 2025. In 52.2 percent of those cases, the patient's own wishes had been confirmed through a treatment plan or an advance directive, up 19.7 percentage points from the system's first year in 2018.

The ministry said the network for registering advance directives expanded to 819 institutions, 59 more than a year earlier, and that 513 hospitals had registered institutional ethics committees, an increase of 40.

"With Korea's entry into a super-aged society, public interest in a dignified end to life is growing," said Kwak Soon-heon, the ministry's director-general for health and medical policy. "We will continue to support and improve the operation of the life-sustaining treatment decision system and the hospice and palliative care system so that anyone can fully express and have respected their wishes about the end of their life."