By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
Boxing champ Choi Yo-sam passed away Thursday after being removed from a life-support device. He not only helped six patients with the donation of his organs but also rekindled public awareness regarding organ donation in South Korea, where an acute shortage exists. Experts hope that this revived interest in organ donation will continue to grow.
Organ shortage here is severe and shows no signs of improvement. The Korean Network for Organ Sharing (KONOS) said Thursday that in 2007 alone a total of 20,047 patients were added to the waiting list as would-be organ recipients. The figure was 17,219 in 2006 and 15,012 in 2005. The number of eligible donors including those in a coma was estimated at merely 148 in 2007, 141 in 2006 and 91 in 2005.
``Korea's roots in Confucianism, which holds a dim view toward harm to the body even as a corpse, has served as a main obstacle to organ sharing, keeping people from donating their organs. But it's fading away,'' Lee Seung-hyun, spokesperson for the Korean Organ and Tissue Donor Program, told The Korea Times. ``Currently, tough regulations and complex procedures to win donor status largely contribute to such a low participation ratio in organ donation.''
She said that some action needs to be taken for deregulation because applicants must go through cumbersome steps including lodging a self-written application form to win donor status. ``In most countries the organ donation procedure is swift such as in Spain, the U.S. and France, which all have a simple processes,'' she said.
The bottom line is that the government should give more opportunities to people to deliberate on the importance of organ donation by exposing them to messages or circumstances encouraging such noble deeds, experts said.
The government started asking new driving license winners of their intentions regarding organ donation since September last year in order to raise people's awareness. ``The government should extend the scope of the policy to those who got their licenses before September. At the same time, it must simplify procedures for would-be donors,'' she said.
According to a recent survey of 500 adults aged over 19 by RealMeter, a local survey firm, more than 33 percent of the respondents said they would make posthumous organ donation while 23 percent said they will not. If such a brisk donation were made in Korea, the number of patients requiring organ transplant would nosedive within a couple of years, resulting in shrinking illegal organ trade at an extremely high price tag.