More older moms, fewer maternity hospitals: Korea faces delivery crisis

The government is pouring massive funds into preventing the collapse of childbirth infrastructure, but it fails to adequately address high-risk deliveries resulting from the increase in older mothers.

According to data submitted to Rep. Jang Jong-tae of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee, by the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, the number of mothers aged 35 and older giving birth increased by 17.2 percent from 77,294 in 2020 to 90,578 in 2024.

During the period, high-risk deliveries rose by 42.1 percent, from 39,835 to 56,584. Notably, the share of high-risk deliveries among the total increased by 9.7 percentage points, from 16.5 percent in 2020 to 26.2 percent in 2024, indicating that more than one in four newborns is delivered via high-risk birth.

To counter the collapse of delivery infrastructure, the government introduced public policy fees for regional, safe, and emergency deliveries last year. For this purpose, the national health insurance funds allocated over the 18-month period from January 2024 to June 2025 totaled 238.2 billion won ($169.6 million).

However, while the closure rate of delivery medical institutions facing severe financial difficulties has decreased slightly due to fee support, the decline in delivery facilities continues, indicating that the financial investment has had a minimal effect.

Among delivery medical institutions, the closure rate for hospital-level facilities decreased from 10.3 percent in 2023 to 7.8 percent in 2024, while the closure rate for clinic-level facilities dropped from 9.9 percent to 6.6 percent over the period. However, no new medical delivery institutions opened, resulting in a decline in overall numbers.

“Despite pouring over 150 billion won annually, we remain helpless in the face of the structural crisis of rapidly increasing high-risk deliveries,” Rep. Jang said. “Instead of temporary measures like injecting funds to temporarily halt closures, the government must draw a roadmap for a qualitative transformation of the delivery system. This includes designating hub hospitals specializing in high-risk deliveries and training skilled medical personnel.”

He continued, “We must begin discussions on systematically reforming the medical delivery system to address the reality where high-risk mothers are concentrated solely in tertiary hospitals.”