It’s the largest single donation ever made by an idol.
BTS‘s Suga has made history with the largest single donation ever to a hospital.
Suga has helped to establish the Min Yoongi Treatment Center at the Severance Hospital in the Seodaemun district of Seoul. The treatment center will help support the treatment and encouragement of social independence of individuals with autism spectrum disorder, providing speech, psychological, and behavioral therapy alongside other programs for research and support.
The Severance Hospital held a ceremony to commemorate the announcement of the donation. Suga has donated ₩5.00 billion KRW (about $3.64 million USD) to the hospital. Suga has constantly made it known that he had an interest in mental health, especially when it came to adolescent depression, and has been looking for ways to help out since.
In November 2024, Suga connected with Professor Cheon Geun Ah from the Severance Hospital’s Pediatric Psychiatry depertment. After connecting with her, he learned that patients with autism spectrum disorder require customized treatment, but such custom treatment is currently difficult to achieve with conventional methods.
I would like to sincerely thank Suga for not just his financial support, but for both his talent donation and his volunteer work for the past few months. I was very impressed with his consistently sincere and cerebral attitude.
The ultimate goal of the MIND program and the Min Yoongi Treatment Center is to help children with autism spectrum disorder grow into independent individuals and contributing members of society through music. We also want to get rid of existing prejudices and improve awareness.
— Cheon Geun Ah
The two have discussed using music-based social skills training as part of the treatment process, developing the MIND program. The MIND program stands for Music, Interaction, Network, and Diversity. It uses music to enhanve interaction and sensory experiences for individuals, giving them opportunities to interact with others and build relationships while embracing and respecting individual differences. Children in this program will play instruments, sing songs, and express their emotions and thoughts through music and writing.
Suga’s incredible donation is the largest single donation ever delivered to not only the Severance Children’s Hospital, but to Yonsei Medical Center as a whole, as the two hospitals are affiliated. The Min Yoongi Treatment Center will be fully completed in September 2025, the current programs will be expanded and new ones will be added.
During the past seven months of preparing this program and volunteering with Professor Cheon, I genuinely felt that music can be a valuable method for expressing one’s feelings and communicating with the world.
Being part of the treatment process for children with autism spectrum disorder has been a big blessing and source of happiness for me. I will continue to support efforts that will help more children integrate into society.
— Suga
Between March and June of this year, Suga was involved in the development of the MIND program, meeting with children with autism spectrum disorder on the weekends and even teaching them how to play specific instruments. He was able to witness firsthand how the inclusion of music significantly increased the childrens’ emotional and language expression and improvement in their social skills as they waited for their turn to play.
