By Na Young | representative/project team leader
On September 16th, the Korean government finally announced that it will introduce abortion pills. This comes seven years after the Constitutional Court ruled that the criminalization of abortion was unconstitutional, and five years after a Korean pharmaceutical company first applied for approval of Mifegymiso.
Since the Constitutional Court’s ruling, we have consistently called on the government to make the introduction of abortion pills and coverage under the national health insurance system top priorities. And now, we are finally seeing a path toward making abortion pills officially and safely available through Korea’s healthcare system.
But there is still a lot of work to do. The government says it will approve the medication no later than the first quarter of next year. However, it also announced that for the first two years after approval, access will be tightly restricted, with both prescribing and dispensing limited to hospitals.
The government has also been frustratingly vague about key details—including who will be able to prescribe the medication, whether it will be covered by national health insurance, what kind of risk management plan will be put in place, and how access will be expanded—often pointing to the pharmaceutical company as an excuse or simply postponing answers.
SHARE will keep pushing for the measures needed to protect people’s rights and expand access before the final decisions are made next March. We’re not done yet!
Through August 2026, SHARE has been working to build a more systematic counseling and support system.
We developed an Ethical Guidelines for Counseling and Support, along with detailed step-by-step manuals covering everything from initial consultations to situation- and person-specific support and follow-up medical care. We also newly formed Funding Committees for young people, migrants, and refugees, bringing together activists and experts from relevant organizations to help determine what kinds of financial support each person needs and how that support should be provided.
We also organized data from counseling and support cases handled since August 2025 and built a system for statistical analysis.
As the number of counseling cases has grown, we have also been focusing on preventing burnout among our team. For cases involving more complex or overlapping circumstances, we invited activists with relevant expertise to provide supervision and support to our counselors and activists.
Since 2024, SHARE has been running an annual Training Program for Counselors and Activists Providing Comprehensive Abortion Counseling and Support.
Because the program involves a lot of hands-on practice and workshops, it has traditionally been offered in person, making it difficult for people living outside Seoul to participate. We have received many requests for an online version, so this year, for the first time, we launched a condensed online training program specifically for participants outside Seoul.
The program runs from August 19 to September 23, with 16 counselors and activists from different parts of Korea taking part. They work in counseling centers, support organizations, and sex education, and meet every Wednesday evening for a total of 12 lectures and workshops.
Through this program, we hope to build stronger connections among people providing abortion support in different parts of Korea and create a network where they can learn from and support one another.
SHARE has welcomed a new activist to our work supporting young people, migrants, and refugees seeking abortion care.
Since August, Hye-ri Park has completed onboarding that covered SHARE’s approach to sexual and reproductive health and rights and reproductive justice; our mission and key activities; the ethics of comprehensive abortion counseling and support; and our main work manuals and procedures.
Now, Hye-ri is taking on counseling and support work as part of the SHARE team.
Please support our newest team member, Hye-ri Park, as she gets started and takes on new challenges with SHARE!
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