 The number of ESRD patients is growing at a much faster rate than the total population, with almost 1,000 941.7 ESRD patients per one million as of 2006. The ESRD prevalence in Korea is ranked as high as 10th globally. The most common underlying diseases of ESRD in Korea include diabetes 42.3, hypertension 16.9, and chronic glomerulonephritis 13.0. Diabetes and hypertension have been continuously increasing, as with a number of elderly patients due to population aging. From the examples of foreign countries with 2-to-3 fold larger dialysis population per million than Korea ex. Japan, Taiwan, and the US, dialysis population here is forecasted to skyrocket. According to the 2003 data from the National Health Insurance Corporation that investigated diseases with high yearly treatment cost of over 5 million KRW, chronic renal failure CRF ranked first in both men and women. It was the single most expensive disease in 2000, with 212 billion KRW medical spending on 18,000 CRF patients, representing a significant burden to the national healthcare budget. 