South Korea: Brain-dead Busan man donates organs, saves five lives

A man from Busan died after being declared brain dead following a sudden illness, and his family chose to donate his organs, saving five lives. Park Seong-bae, 41, was the father of a 60-day-old daughter.

The Korea Organ and Tissue Donation Agency said on the 13th that Park’s organs were donated on January 30 at Dong-A University Hospital in Busan, including his heart, lungs, liver and both kidneys, which collectively saved five recipients.

Park was brought to the hospital on January 19 after experiencing a severe headache. Despite treatment, he did not regain consciousness and was determined to be brain dead.

Following doctors’ assessment that waking from coma was unlikely, Park’s family consented to organ donation. They expressed a wish that their newborn daughter will remember her father as someone who practiced noble sharing.

Park was born in Busan and was the eldest of two siblings. He studied physical education at university, worked at a shipyard, and enjoyed sports, including soccer, on weekends.

His wife, Im Hyun-jeong, said in a farewell message that they would raise their daughter with love and asked others not to worry about them. “When we meet again, please tell him he did well. We miss him and love him very much,” she said.

The case illustrates how brain-death organ donation works in Korea, coordinated by the national donation agency, and how a single donor can provide multiple life-saving organs. For U.S. readers, it highlights the ongoing importance of organ donation programs, family decision-making, and the flow of organs to save lives within active transplant systems that rely on similarly structured consent and allocation processes.