A newborn at a hospital in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Aug. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — A majority of young South Korean women who have yet to give birth have the intention to preserve their eggs through ‘egg freezing,’ a method used to save women’s ability to get pregnant in the future, regardless of whether or not they plan to get married in the future.
The Cha University Fertility Center Bundang carried out a survey of 1,000 pre-pregnancy women, with 69.8 percent of the 558 unmarried women and 64 percent (128) of the pre-pregnancy married women saying they intended to save their eggs for future use.
Among the respondents, 57.4 percent (394) said that despite not having any plans to have children, they wanted to preserve their eggs to be better prepared for cases like subfertility or old-age delivery.
Roughly one third of the respondents (224) said they wanted to save healthy eggs for use whenever they were ready to begin a family.
The preservation of female eggs is available through so-called egg freezing procedures, in which a woman’s eggs are extracted, frozen and then stored.
In the past, cancer patients chose to freeze and preserve eggs prior to beginning treatment in preparation for the possibility that their ovaries could stop functioning normally.
In recent days, however, egg freezing is increasingly popular among young women who want to preserve their ability to get pregnant or to have a well-planned birth.
According to the analysis by the Female Medical Center of the Cha Hospital, the number of women who chose to freeze their eggs at the hospital marked a more than fifteenfold increase, rising to 635 in 2018 from 42 in 2014.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
