South Korea hopes that young people, like these at the Cheongam

By PAM BELLUCK

SEONGNAM, South Korea - South Korea is at the forefront of a worldwide eruption of dementia. The disease is exploding globally, from about 30 million estimated cases now to an estimated 100 million in 2050.

South Korea’s approach to its Alzheimers’ problem is unusually extensive. As one of the world’s fastest-aging countries, with nearly 9 percent of its population over 65 already afflicted, the country has opened a “War on Dementia,” spending money and shining light on a disease that is, here as in many places, riddled with shame and fear. South Korea is training thousands of people, including children, as “dementia supporters,” to recognize symptoms and care for patients.

And in another striking move, South Korea is also pushing to make diagnoses early, despite there being scant treatment. “This used to be hidden” and “there is still stigma ,” said Kim Hye-jin, director of senior policy for the Health and Welfare Ministry.

But “we want to get them out of their shells, out of their homes and diagnosed” to help families adjust and give patients “a higher chance of being taken care of at home.” Hundreds of neighborhood dementia diagnostic centers have been created. Nursing homes have nearly tripled since 2008.

Other programs, providing day care and home care, have increased fivefold since 2008, to nearly 20,000. Care is heavily subsidized. And a government dementia database allows families to register relatives and receive iron-on identification numbers. Citizens encountering wanderers with dementia report their numbers to officials, who contact families.

To finance this, South Korea created a long-term-care insurance system, paid for with 6.6 percent increases in people’s national health insurance premiums. In 2009, about $1 billion of government and public insurance money was spent on dementia patients. Still, with the over-65 population jumping from 7 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2018 to 20 percent in 2026, dementia is straining the country, socially and economically.

“At least one family member has to give up work” to provide care, said Kwak Young-soon, social welfare director for Mapo District, one of Seoul’s 25 geographic districts. Families may also lose dementia sufferers’ incomes. Most families no longer have generations living together to help with caregiving, and some facilities have long waiting lists, but “we can’t keep building nursing homes,” Mr. Kwak said. “We call it a ghost.

It’s basically eating up the whole house.” The country’s leaders worry that dementia, previously stigmatized as “ghost-seeing” or “one’s second childhood” could “dilute respect for elders,” Mr. Kwak said. So the authorities promote the notion that filial piety implies doing everything possible for elders with dementia, a condition now called chimae.

But South Korea’s low birth rate will make family caregiving tougher. “I feel as if a tsunami’s coming,” said Lee Sung-hee, the South Korean Alzheimer’s Association president, who trains nursing home staff members, but also thousands who regularly interact with the elderly: bus drivers, tellers, hairstylists, postal workers. “Sometimes I think I want to run away,” she said.

South Korea is even trying to turn a crisis into a business opportunity. The “Aging-Friendly Comprehensive Experience Hall” outside Seoul, financed by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, encourages businesses to produce items for feeble elderly people. College students visit the hall and take “Dementia Experience” video journeys, following people disoriented on streets or seeking bathrooms.

Throughout South Korea, Mrs. Lee leads “dementia supporter” training, advocating for preserving patients’ skills and self-esteem. If patients say, “ ‘I’m good at making soy soup,’ but forget ingredients,” guide them step by step, she advised.

Otherwise, “They may make it into salt soup, and everyone will say, ‘Oh, this is terrible, you stop doing it.’ ” Even the youngest are enlisted. Dr. Yang Dong-won, who directs one of the many government-run diagnostic centers in Seoul, has visited kindergartens, bringing tofu.

“This is very soft, like the brain,” he said, letting it crash down. Now, “the brain is destroyed.” He tells the children: “ Protect your brain, with exercise, “not drinking too much sugar” and saying, “ ‘Daddy, don’t drink so much because it’s not good for dementia.’ ” Cha Jeong-eun’s family got her father, Cha Kyong-ho , tested after Mr. Cha, 74, a retired subway official, could not find his way home one day. “I was like, ‘Where the hell am I?’ ” he said. “ I can see it with my eyes and my brain is processing it, but I cannot say it out loud,” he said about the questions he was given at the Mapo Center for Dementia. “Jeez, it’s so headachy.

” Dr. Yang found that Mr. Cha was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. He recommended drug treatment and Mapo’s free programs “to stimulate what brain cells he has.” Schools offer community service credit for working with dementia patients, whom students call grandmas and grandpas.

Teenage girls do foot massage at the Cheongam nursing home, for women without sons to care for them. (In South Korea, sons’ families traditionally shoulder caregiving responsibilities.) Oh Yu-mi, 16, said, “It will help them excrete better.” Park Min-jung, 17, was shaken to realize that dementia could explain why her grandfather recently grabbed a taxi, seeking his no-longer-existent house.

“He used to be very scary to me,’’ she said, but training made her feel that “I can do things for him.” A boys’ high school selects top students to help at Seobu Nursing Center. For Kim Han-bit, 16, the program is intensely personal. Han-bit was 13 when his grandmother, who practically raised him, got Alzheimer’s, and “I would just feel it was annoying and walk out of the room,” he said.

“She would ask to do an activity, and I would say, ‘What business do you have doing that?’ It was my responsibility to feed her, give her drinks, wash her face. But I even resisted and fought back,” he said. When she died, he added, “I couldn’t let out tears.” The program has made him reflect on his own experience. “I think I should do better in the future to compensate for all my wrongdoing,” he said.

Recently, he worked to engage Lee Jeong-hee, a patient half his height with missing teeth who laughed, but spoke incoherently. “When I come next time,” he said tenderly, “please remember me.”