A comprehensive new analysis has cast a harsh light on the rapidly escalating crisis within South Korea’s elderly care system, revealing a critical failure to keep pace with a senior population that has swelled to over 10 million. The report, titled the “2025 Elderly Care Gap Index,” meticulously documents how the supply of essential services—from public insurance and specialized housing to affordable private care—is being dangerously outstripped by soaring demand. This growing imbalance has created a significant “care gap,” a term describing the profound chasm between the needs of the elderly and the available public and private resources to support them. Over the last three years, the situation has markedly deteriorated across every key indicator, signaling a systemic challenge that threatens the well-being of millions and places an unsustainable burden on families and the national economy. The findings paint a stark picture of a nation at a demographic crossroads, struggling to build a resilient support structure for its most vulnerable citizens.
Quantifying a System Under Strain
The centerpiece of the analysis is the Elderly Care Gap Index, a proprietary metric designed to quantify and track the severity of this societal challenge with alarming precision. Using 2008, the year South Korea’s long-term care insurance system was launched, as a baseline value of 100, the index provides an intuitive measure of the growing disparity between need and provision. The 2025 report, which leverages the most current data from 2024, calculates the overall index at a staggering 197. This figure represents a near doubling of the care gap in under two decades and a sharp 31-point surge from the 2021 score of 166, a clear signal that the problem is accelerating at a dangerous rate. Caredoc CEO Jae-Byeong Park noted that while the absolute supply of care services has seen a modest increase, this growth has been comprehensively outmatched by the faster expansion of the elderly demographic. This mismatch has resulted in diminished accessibility for those in need and a wider, more entrenched systemic gap that requires urgent and innovative intervention.
The report further dissects this overarching crisis into three critical sub-indices, each revealing a unique facet of the system’s shortcomings and each worsening considerably. The first, the Long-Term Care Gap Index, assesses the reach of public long-term care insurance benefits and registered a sobering score of 189. Based on this trend, the report projects a grim reality for 2025, estimating that a staggering 8.99 million seniors—or 89% of the total elderly population—will be living outside the safety net of public care services, placing them at significant risk. The analysis identifies individuals aged 85 and older as the most vulnerable group, having the highest demand for care and facing the greatest exposure to this coverage gap. Compounding the issue are severe regional disparities; with over half of all facilities concentrated in the metropolitan area, regions outside this hub face a much higher risk. Busan, for instance, recorded the highest gap for facility-based care at 91%, while Jeju Island had the largest gap for home-based care at 66%.
The Compounding Challenges of Housing and Cost
The second indicator, the Senior Housing Gap Index, reached an even more dire score of 205, highlighting a critical shortfall in the supply of specialized senior housing. These facilities, which combine residential living with integrated care services, serve as a crucial barometer for the stability of senior housing welfare. Although the number of such facilities has grown fivefold since 2008 to 6,557 in 2024, their total occupancy capacity stands at a mere 270,000. This capacity can accommodate only 2.7% of the entire senior population, leaving more than 97% with no viable option but to join lengthy waiting lists or depend on less comprehensive and often inadequate home care arrangements. The geographical analysis revealed that these housing gaps are most acute in densely populated areas, with Ulsan, major metropolitan cities, and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province exhibiting the greatest shortfalls. This creates a troubling paradox where access to stable, care-integrated housing is lowest precisely where population density, and therefore demand, is at its highest.
The third and final sub-index, the Care Cost Price Index, hit 210, confirming that the financial burden of care per elderly person has more than doubled since 2008 and is placing an unsustainable strain on families. This financial pressure is growing disproportionately relative to average income levels and is exacerbated by the phenomenon of “young caregivers”—younger family members who are forced to leave the workforce to care for relatives, resulting in lost income and significant economic hardship for their own households. The report projects that the average monthly cost of hiring a private caregiver in 2025 will be approximately 4.32 million won. This figure alarmingly exceeds the average monthly income of 3.63 million won by 690,000 won, rendering professional care unaffordable for a vast segment of the population. These already prohibitive costs are further compounded when an elderly person requires hospitalization, pushing essential care even further out of reach for ordinary families.
A Path Forward Through Integrated Solutions
In response to this multifaceted crisis, the Caredoc report championed the expansion of the senior housing model as a critical and practical alternative to alleviate the growing social care burden. By integrating housing, skilled care, food, and other essential supplies under a single managed system, these facilities can prevent inefficient spending while simultaneously providing high-quality, professional, 24/7 care. This integrated model addresses multiple pain points at once: it provides a stable living environment, ensures consistent access to medical and personal support, and relieves families of the logistical and financial complexities of coordinating disparate services. The report contended that this holistic approach could prove to be a powerful tool in closing the care gap, estimating that it could reduce the overall care cost per senior by as much as 40%, making sustainable, high-quality care a more attainable reality for a larger portion of the population.
This rigorous analysis garnered immediate attention from influential figures in both academic and political circles. Professor Kim Kyung-min of Seoul National University praised the index as an “important indicator that clearly shows in numbers the gap in the long-term care system” and stated that it “strongly demonstrates the need for a new housing model supply and care policy.” Similarly, Representative Eom Tae-young of the National Assembly’s Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee noted the significance of a private-sector entity systematically analyzing this reality, expecting the data to be “helpful in establishing future senior housing supply policies.” In its conclusion, Caredoc emphasized that the private sector must play an increasingly vital role in supplementing public care and filling these widening gaps. CEO Jae-Byeong Park affirmed his company’s dedication to using its field-level data to lead in proposing effective policy and industrial directions for building a resilient and sustainable care system.
