South Korea's dementia care system strains under rising patient numbers
As South Korea passes the super-aged threshold, more than a million seniors are expected to have dementia, exposing gaps in a fragmented care network.
South Korea entered 2025 as a super-aged society, with more than one-fifth of its citizens over 65 and dementia patients projected to top one million this year. Despite a national responsibility system launched in 2017, 61.3% of the 257 dementia relief centers were understaffed at the end of last year, causing diagnostic backlogs of two to three months. The majority of daytime elder-care facilities are privately run, resulting in a rise in closures and a shift toward cheaper, peripheral locations that increase family burdens.
Patients with severe behavioral symptoms often wait a year or longer for scarce specialized public hospitals. Dementia-related medical spending surged to 3.37 trillion won in 2023, highlighting the fiscal pressure of delayed or inappropriate care. The new five-year dementia management plan (2026-2030) calls for better staffing, data integration, and reimbursement reforms to keep seniors in the community longer and ease financial strain on families and the state.
Why it matters
The growing dementia burden threatens families, public finances and seniors' wellbeing in an increasingly aged South Korea.
In this story
