A record number of married couples in their 60s split up last year, despite a downward trend in South Korea's divorce numbers in past years, government data showed Thursday.
Divorces by men and women over the age of 60 reached 13,743 in 2025, up 943 from the previous year and marking the highest figure since the government started the tally in 1990, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics. The figure accounted for 15.6 percent of all divorces in the country that year, also an all-time high.
The percentage of these so-called gray divorces — divorces that occur later in life — has increased from 13.4 percent in 2022.
This contrasted the general trend of divorce becoming less frequent in Korea. The ministry data showed that 88,130 divorces took place across the country in 2025, down by 3,021 from the previous year.
The total number of divorces in Korea has decreased for six straight years; last year's figure was the lowest in 29 years, since the 79,895 divorces recorded in 1996.
The data showed that a significant number of couples have split up after a lengthy marriage. Some 17.7 percent of couples who had been married for 30 years got divorced in 2025, leading all divorces in terms of marriage period.
Couples married for five to nine years accounted for 17.3 percent of all divorces that year, followed by those married for four years or less (16.4 percent).
With more couples separating later in life, the average age of divorced people last year reached 51 for men and 47.7 for women. This marked a 0.6 percentage point increase for both genders compared to 2024, and a rise of 4.1 years for men and 4.4 years for women compared to 2015.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
