About 300 citizens will gather at Seoul National University's Siheung Campus for two days starting Nov. 7. The event is the '2nd Medical Innovation Citizen Panel Public Deliberation Forum for Strengthening End-of-Life Care and Support,' hosted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Medical Innovation Committee under the Prime Minister. Over the two-day overnight session, participants will debate when life-sustaining treatment should be withheld or withdrawn, who should decide when patients cannot decide for themselves, and how end-of-life medical care and support should be provided.
Two days before the forum, statistics were released showing a steady rise in the number of people who want to prepare for their final days themselves.
According to the "2025 Annual Report on the Life-Sustaining Treatment Decision System," published by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Central Hospice Center and the National Agency for Management of Life-Sustaining Treatment, new advance directive registrations totaled 499,961 last year. Nearly 500,000 were added in a single year. Since the system took effect in February 2018, registrations have reached a cumulative 3,201,958.
The number of patients seeking hospice care also rose. According to the "2025 National Hospice and Palliative Care Annual Report," new patients using the service last year numbered 26,020, up 1,702 (6.9%) from a year earlier. The figure has increased every year since 2023. Hospice and palliative care services have been in operation since 2003.
A growing number of people signing advance directives does not guarantee that their wishes will be honored at the bedside. The criteria for deciding when to stop treatment and the range of people who may decide on a patient's behalf need to be clear. This forum will address those criteria and that range.
The citizen panel is a representative group of the public, recruited with balanced consideration of gender, age and region of residence. Its first public deliberation was held in July on the theme of 'reviving regional and essential medical care,' and this is the second. The Medical Innovation Committee is chaired by Jung Ki-hyun.
Expert presentations and the results of group discussions will be streamed live on the Ministry of Health and Welfare's YouTube channel. This weekend, citizens will discuss directly the criteria for how the final wishes that more than 3 million people have written down can be honored in actual medical settings.
