In excruciating pain from a debilitating neurological condition, Lee Myung-shik had reluctantly given up on assisted death in Switzerland when he learned his daughter risked prison time if she helped him.
Now the 65-year-old is looking to South Korea’s Constitutional Court for help in what is the first known legal challenge to the country’s assisted dying ban, according to his lawyer.
Despite strong opioid pain medication, wheelchair-bound Lee has endured constant discomfort since his 2020 diagnosis with acute myelitis, a rare condition that has no known cure.
His urine is drained through a catheter, and a carer manually removes his stool.
The pain, Lee said, feels like “my thighs are being crushed by a heavy press, as though my lower body were pinned beneath a dump truck”.
“I am not really living. I am merely surviving,” said Lee, who also contends with pressure sores and skin necrosis.
He has long come to see death as the only escape.
In 2022, Lee was planning to travel to Switzerland with the help of Dignitas, a Swiss non-profit that supports people seeking an assisted death.
As he cannot travel alone, his daughter was to accompany him.
But “joy turned to sorrow”, Lee said, when he realised she could face up to 10 years in prison back home under a ban on assisted suicide in South Korea’s Criminal Act.
“While preparing the paperwork, I halted the process because I could not bring myself to list a companion,” he said, dashing his “only hope”.
In 2023, Lee filed a petition with the Constitutional Court, arguing that when medicine offers no cure and life entails only physical and mental suffering, a person’s “right to decide on their own death” should be protected by the state.
“Incurable, persistent and excruciating pain is the most brutal form of torture on Earth,” he said.
Dignitas said it had helped 11 South Koreans with assisted deaths by December 2025.
“It appears people travelled there secretly and no one reported them to the police,” Lee said.
It is a risk he was not willing to take, nor should anyone have to, insisted Lee.
“If the constitutional complaint succeeds, the legal interpretation of aiding and abetting suicide could shift, allowing people in similar circumstances to avoid criminal punishment,” he said.
A public hearing may be held later this year, nearly three years after Lee’s petition was filed.
A total of 144 South Koreans had applied for Dignitas’ services by the end of last year – the 14th-highest national figure. — AFP
