Organ Donation Movement Marks 35 Years With 1.24 Million Registrations, 90,069 kidney Donations
WORLD NEWS – SOUTH KOREA: A national organ donation advocacy group marked its 35th anniversary with a ceremony that fused celebration and renewed commitment to transplantation and donor outreach. The event, convened by 사랑의 장기기증 운동본부 (Love Organ Donation Movement Headquarters), honored families of brain‑dead donors and individuals whose decisions decades ago continue to shape lives through kidney transplants. The organization’s leader, Yoo Jae‑su, framed the past three-and-a-half decades as an extraordinary period of generosity in which strangers have enabled life-saving transplants.
Awards recognized contributions from bereaved donor families and long-term living donors, including a kidney donor whose decision 30 years earlier exemplified sustained impact on transplantation outcomes. The ceremony underscored both deceased-donor procurement and living kidney donation as central pillars of the group’s work, highlighting the human stories behind organ matches, surgical transplants, and post‑operative recoveries that follow donation decisions. The gathering served as both tribute and public reminder of how individual acts can ripple into community-level health benefits.
Founded in 1991 as the country’s first organized push to normalize organ donation, the movement reports 1.24 million people registered as potential donors and some 90,069 pure kidney donations attributed to its outreach since inception. Officials called these figures evidence of significant cultural shifts around donation and transplantation and laid out plans to intensify education, donor registration drives, and support for donor families to sustain momentum into the coming years.
Leaders portrayed the anniversary as a turning point to deepen trust in the transplant system, expand awareness of procurement and living donation pathways, and ensure that the personal sacrifices behind every transplant are recognized and supported as Korea seeks to increase safe, ethical organ availability.
Video originally published on 2026-01-27 08:00:49
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