Vehicle barriers are set up near the entrance of a correctional facility in Seoul, in this 2021 photo. According to the Ministry of Justice's annual report on its correctional facilities, the number of inmates aged 60 or older last year was 6,504, a significant increase from 2,801 in 2014. Korea Times photo by Seo Jae-hoon

Korea's aging population is driving changes in many sectors of society, and its prisons are no exception.

According to the Ministry of Justice's annual report on its correctional facilities, Monday, the number of inmates aged 60 or older last year was 6,504, a significant increase from 2,801 in 2014.

Meanwhile, their proportion of the total incarcerated population more than doubled to 17.1 percent from 8.4 percent. This means one out of six prisoners is in their 60s or older today.

This bodes ill for the nation's prison management system, which is already struggling with many other problems, according to experts.

As that population grows, many new challenges are expected. For example, more prisoners may exhibit signs of cognitive decline including dementia, a disease that is more common in older people, and more inmates may need wheelchairs or other physical assistance to move around.

Given that the government has a legal obligation to provide adequate health care services, it, at least in principle, would require major reforms to more than 50 correctional facilities across the country in order to address that change, experts say.

"All this could mean significantly higher medical costs for prisoners. The number of inmates diagnosed with mental illnesses has already been increasing in recent years," an inspector at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea told The Korea Times. "That is becoming a major problem as the size of the medical staff responsible for their health isn't keeping up due to low wages and frequent lawsuits from prisoners among other reasons."

However, the aging issue has largely been ignored by politicians who see little incentive in addressing it. Yet by neglecting it, he said they fail to fulfill their legal responsibility to achieve one of the key purposes of operating such facilities: rehabilitation, or to help criminals reform their behavior and reintegrate into society.

In recent months, five bills have been proposed at the National Assembly to address prison-related issues, but none were related to aging.

In the latest issue of the official magazine published by the Korea Correctional Service, Park Soon-yong, a senior prison officer at the Daejeon Regional Correction Headquarters, offered several ideas to improve the system.

One is to develop education programs that would be more effective for older prisoners. He said current programs do not target specific groups, which could mean less effectiveness.

Another suggestion is to build new facilities for older prisoners and introduce prison officers who specialize in handling and educating such inmates.

"But establishing new facilities exclusively for elderly prisoners costs a considerable amount of money," Park wrote. "Also, such a move could draw complaints and concerns from those who think the prison system would be turned into some sort of a nursing facility. To address such issues, there should be a social consensus on the policy direction in terms of how to treat older inmates."

The aging prison population is a reflection of a larger change the country is undergoing amid its persistently low birthrate. According to the ministry's annual report, the number of prison officers in their 40s and 50s accounted for nearly 75 percent of the total in 2023.