South Korea
A universal insurance system that legislated hospice care and end-of-life treatment decisions in one act, a test case for law-led palliative care.
9 domains reviewed · 9 high-confidence · 0 dated estimates · 9 material gaps
WHO region: Western Pacific. World Bank income group: Income group not yet retrieved.
- Domains reviewed
- 9 of 9
- Hospice: 4 of 4
- Backed by a primary document
- 0 of 9
- Open questions
- 10
- Sources behind this dossier
- 21
- Newest source 2026
Lessons from South Korea
- Insurance coverage for home hospice shifted deaths toward home. Payment design is a practical lever for place-of-care goals.211
- A law centered on end-of-life decision procedures with narrow disease eligibility left most terminally ill people without palliative care. Eligibility should follow need, not diagnosis.209,79
- Society-run certification without state recognition or incentives is losing physicians. Specialty recognition sustains the workforce.167
- Adding insurance coverage for home-based hospice was followed by a rise in home deaths among cancer patients, most clearly in rural areas.211
- A legally mandated national hospice registry lets a country track hospice use as a share of cancer deaths and beds per million by region every year.350
- A home death preference is common, and caregiver support may decide whether it is realized.505
Palliative care
Is morphine available in South Korea?
Opioid supply. Is a therapeutic opioid physically available in the wards that need it? Every country on this question
Chronic strong opioid use in the general population rose from 2002 to 2015. Pain medication is widely stocked in urban primary care, with more access problems in rural areas.207,79
What is national opioid consumption for palliative patients against an adequacy benchmark?
Help answer it:Search PubMedHow does South Korea regulate opioids for pain?
Narcotics regulation. What licensing regime governs stocking and dispensing, and when did it last change? Every country on this question
Opioid prescribing falls under the Narcotics Control Act, not the hospice law, which has no detailed provisions on opioid access. A prescription drug monitoring program operates.79,212
What does the Narcotics Control Act require for stocking, limits and dispensing, and when did monitoring start?
Help answer it:Search PubMedWho can prescribe morphine in South Korea?
Prescriber authority. Who is legally allowed to prescribe, and can that group be widened? Every country on this question
Authorized healthcare professionals may prescribe opioids under the Narcotics Control Act.79
Which professions count as authorized, and have nurses been added?
Help answer it:Search PubMedHow does palliative care reach patients in South Korea?
Service delivery. Through what structure does care actually reach a patient at home? Every country on this question
The 2018 hospice and life-sustaining treatment act created national and regional hospice centers covering hospice, hospital and home care, but it limits eligibility to a short list of diseases and has no community service mandate. Consultative hospice teams have been piloted in acute wards since 2017.208,209,79,210
Sources differ on whether the act dates from 2016 or 2018 and on which diseases qualify. Which is correct today?
Help answer it:Search PubMedWho pays for palliative care in South Korea?
Financing. Who pays for the drug, the visit and the workforce? Every country on this question
National Health Insurance funds hospice care under the act and began covering home-based hospice in September 2020, after which more cancer patients died at home.211,79
How does insurance pay for consultative and pediatric hospice programs?
Help answer it:Search PubMedHow are palliative care clinicians trained in South Korea?
Training and recognition. What credential exists, who awards it, and does anyone recognize it? Every country on this question
Palliative care has been required in all medical schools since 2016. A society-run physician certification began in 2019, but the government does not recognize the specialty, and applicant numbers are falling.167,79
Will the government recognize hospice and palliative medicine as a subspecialty?
Help answer it:Search PubMedHow does South Korea prevent opioid misuse without blocking pain relief?
Opioid safeguards. How are misuse and diversion controlled, and are treatment and naloxone available, without blocking pain relief? Every country on this question
South Korea tracks all narcotic manufacturing, distribution and sales through its Narcotics Information Management System, but a national study found only minor changes in indicators of inappropriate opioid use after it started, possibly because it lacks real-time monitoring. Among 946 cancer patients on strong opioids, only 0.2% of each sex scored high risk for aberrant opioid behavior.681,680,674
Has the Narcotics Information Management System changed opioid access for people with cancer or at end of life, and how available are methadone or buprenorphine treatment and take-home naloxone in South Korea?
Help answer it:Search PubMedHow do children get palliative care in South Korea?
Children's palliative care. How do children with life-limiting conditions get palliative care and the medicines they need? Every country on this question
A government pediatric palliative care project runs through ten hospitals. All nine hospitals surveyed offered counseling, education and bereavement care, but only one offered respite care. At one children's hospital, specialized palliative care was linked with earlier advance care planning, less mechanical ventilation or resuscitation, and more opioid use at end of life.684,685
How many children with life-limiting conditions nationally are reached by the ten project hospitals, and what pediatric opioid formulations are available?
Help answer it:Search PubMedHospice care in South Korea
How the hospice model works here, who can use it, who pays and who it reaches. Covered 4 of 4.
What does hospice care look like in South Korea?
Hospice model. What does hospice mean here, who runs it, and in what settings? Every country on this question
Korean hospice care is delivered by hospitals designated by the Ministry of Health and Welfare under the Act on Decisions on Life-sustaining Treatment, enacted in 2016 and enforced in 2017, with about 100 designated hospitals running inpatient hospice wards. A consultative hospice program for patients in acute wards has run as a pilot since August 2017, and home-based hospice has been insurance-covered since September 2020.350,210,211
Who can get hospice care in South Korea?
Hospice eligibility. Who can enter hospice, on what criteria, and how late do patients arrive? Every country on this question
The national registry reports that only terminally ill cancer patients are eligible for inpatient hospice care under Article 2 of the Act, with terminal status confirmed by physicians, and around 80% of patients knew they had terminal illness at admission. Median inpatient hospice stay was 14 days in 2019 and 2020, and 54.7% of hospice users started hospice more than 30 days after their last anticancer therapy.350,351
Who pays for hospice care in South Korea?
Hospice funding. Who pays for hospice care: a public benefit, insurance, charity or families? Every country on this question
Hospice care is covered by National Health Insurance, and coverage was extended to home-based hospice from September 1, 2020. Among registered inpatient hospice patients, nearly 90% were covered by National Health Insurance and around 9% by the Medical Aid program.211,350
What copayment do patients pay for inpatient and home hospice under National Health Insurance?
Help answer it:Search PubMedHow many people reach hospice in South Korea?
Hospice reach. How many dying people use hospice, and who is left out? Every country on this question
The hospice utilization rate among cancer deaths was 22.9% in 2018, 24.3% in 2019 and 23.0% in 2020. In 2020 there were 30 hospice beds per 1,000,000 people, ranging from 54 in Jeonbuk to 13 in Jeju, and dementia is treated as a non-hospice-eligible disease.350,211
What fills the gap in South Korea
How people get care outside formal services: families, faith communities, volunteers, health workers, healers, other medicines and charity. Described, not scored.
- Family caregiving
Bereaved Korean families described adult children's responsibility to care for aged parents at home as both a burden and a main motive for caregiving. In one home hospice service, 85.1% of patients wished to die at home, but only 31.5% of them did, and the primary caregiver's relationship to the patient was linked to place of death.504,505
Single-site evidence- Volunteers and compassionate communities
Sources cited here
- 207Oh TK, Jeon YT, Choi JW.
Trends in chronic opioid use and association with five-year survival in South Korea: a population-based cohort study. British Journal of Anaesthesia 2019;123(5):655-663. Chronic strong opioid use rose from 2002 to 2015 across all patients. Abstract read.
- 79Monzon-Llamas L, Carpen T, Hamzah E, Wang Y, Corvera R, Bausa-Claudio AB, Kim S, Centeno C.
How national laws enhance palliative care integration: lessons from the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. Journal of Global Health 2026;16:04230. DOI 10.7189/jogh.16.04230. Legal document analysis to April 2025. No standalone hospice and palliative care act has been enacted; the bill drafted in 2015 passed the lower house and stalled in the Senate. Palliative provisions sit in the Universal Health Care Act and the National Integrated Cancer Control Act of 2019, with a Department of Health administrative order and a 2021 manual of operations. Reports restrictive drug enforcement rules, too few licensed prescribers and fragmented financing, and that few medical schools require palliative care as a core subject.
- 212Kim S, Suh HS.
A population-based study on the risk of prescription opioid abuse in patients with chronic opioid use and cost-effectiveness of prescription drug monitoring program using a patient simulation model in South Korea. International Journal on Drug Policy 2023;112:103953. A prescription drug monitoring program operates. Abstract read.
- 208Won YW, Kim HJ, Kwon JH, et al.
Life-Sustaining Treatment States in Korean Cancer Patients after Enforcement of Act on Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment for Patients at the End of Life. Cancer Research and Treatment 2021;53(4):908-916. Act dated February 2018; patients who completed the legal process used hospice more. Abstract read.
- 209Park HY, Kim MS, Yoo SH, et al.
For the Universal Right to Access Quality End-of-Life Care in Korea: Broadening Our Perspective After the 2018 Life-Sustaining Treatment Decisions Act. Journal of Korean Medical Science 2024;39(12):e123. Legal scope limited to a few diseases; few terminally ill patients received palliative care in 2022. Full text read.
- 210Park YT, Kim D, Koh SJ, et al.
Patient Factors Associated with Different Hospice Programs in Korea: Analyzing Healthcare Big Data. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2022;19(3):1566. Consultative hospice care in acute wards piloted since August 2017. Abstract read.
- 211Yun I, Jang SI, Park EC, et al.
Changes in the Place of Death of Patients With Cancer After the Introduction of Insurance-Covered, Home-Based Hospice Care in Korea. JAMA Network Open 2023;6(11):e2341422. Insurance covered home hospice from September 2020; home deaths rose. Abstract read.
- 167Oh SN, Kim SH, Lee MA, et al.
The Hospice and Palliative Medicine Physicians Certification Programs across Countries/Regions. Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care 2025;28(2):31-39. Review of certification in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. Abstract and full text read.
- 681Lee IH, Kim SY, Park S, et al.
Impact of the Narcotics Information Management System on Opioid Use Among Outpatients With Musculoskeletal and Connective Tissue Disorders: Quasi-Experimental Study Using Interrupted Time Series. JMIR Public Health Surveill 2024;10:e47130. National claims analysis of 45,582 patients with musculoskeletal disorders (not cancer or palliative care) after Korea introduced its narcotics tracking system. Abstract read.
- 680Oh SY, Park K, Koh SJ, et al.
Survey of Opioid Risk Tool Among Cancer Patients Receiving Opioid Analgesics. J Korean Med Sci 2022;37(23):e185. Multicenter study at 33 institutions of 946 cancer patients on strong opioids; risk scores for aberrant opioid behavior were very low. Abstract read.
- 674Chan AYL, Bahmanyar S, Beyene K, et al.
International Trends in Opioid Prescribing by Age and Sex from 2001 to 2019: An Observational Study Using Population-Based Databases from 18 Countries and One Special Administrative Region. CNS Drugs 2025;39(11):1173-1185. Multinational database study; 2015 opioid prescribing prevalence was lowest in Japan (2.7%) and South Korea had the largest annual rise; indications were not captured. Abstract read.
- 682Lim JW
Family Caregiving and Psychosocial Support in Hospice and Palliative Care: A Social Work Perspective. J Hosp Palliat Care 2026;29(3):139-145. Single-author narrative review from a social work perspective; not a systematic study of Korean services. Abstract read.
- 683Kim B, Hwang IC, Ahn HY, et al.
Family relationships and caregiver burden among family caregivers of patients with terminal cancer. BMC Palliat Care 2025;24(1):207. Cross-sectional survey of 172 family caregivers at nine hospice and palliative care centers in South Korea. Abstract read.
- 684Kim ES, Park M, Kim SB, et al.
Current Practices and Perspectives of Pediatric Palliative Care Workers in South Korea. J Hosp Palliat Care 2025;28(2):56-70. Survey of 18 full-time staff from nine of ten hospitals in the government pediatric palliative care project; staff self-report. Abstract read.
- 685Kim CH, Lee J, Lee JW, et al.
The impact of specialized pediatric palliative care on advance care planning and healthcare utilization in children and young adults: a retrospective analysis of medical records of in-hospital deaths. BMC Palliat Care 2024;23(1):127. Single-center before-after record review at one tertiary children's hospital in South Korea. Abstract read.
- 350Kim K, Park B, Gu B, et al.
The National Hospice and Palliative Care registry in Korea. Epidemiol Health 2022;44:e2022079. Description of the national registry of inpatient hospice care run by the National Hospice Center (2018-2020, 47,911 patients), including legal eligibility, designated hospitals, beds, utilization rate among cancer deaths and length of stay; authors from the government-designated center that runs the registry. Full text read.
- 351Kim B, Kim W, Ryu DH, et al.
Timing of hospice care initiation and aggressive care utilization in patients with cancer: a retrospective nationwide study in Korea. Front Public Health 2026;14:1909398. Nationwide linked claims and cancer registry cohort of 37,996 hospice users (2015-2022) on the interval from last anticancer therapy to hospice start. Abstract read.
- 505Lee EJ, Lee NR.
Factors associated with place of death for terminal cancer patients who wished to die at home. Medicine (Baltimore) 2022;101(39):e30756. Record review of 168 patients using a home hospice service, 2016-2019. Abstract read.
- 504Lee H, Lee J, Lee JE.
Bereaved Families' Experiences of End-of-Life Care at Home for Older Adults with Non-Cancer in South Korea. J Community Health Nurs 2019;36(1):42-53. Phenomenological interviews with bereaved family caregivers; sample size not given in abstract. Abstract read.
- 506Lee S, Kim B.
A Photovoice Study on the Position and Role of Hospice Volunteers in Korea. Risk Manag Healthc Policy 2023;16:931-943. Photovoice with hospice volunteers from one training program. Abstract read.
- 507Yeun YR.
A Study on the Motivations of Korean Hospice Volunteers. Indian J Palliat Care 2020;26(1):24-27. Questionnaire survey of 93 hospice volunteers. Abstract read.