A school-based respect-for-life program integrating deceased organ donation awareness in South Korea: a post-class mixed-methods evaluation

South Korea faces a critical organ shortage, with only 31.2% of families consenting to deceased organ donation following brain death. Traditional public awareness campaigns targeting adults have achieved limited success, suggesting that deeply rooted cultural concerns require more fundamental intervention through youth education. We developed and implemented a values-based education program that integrated deceased organ donation awareness within broader life-respect education. Between November 2023 and July 2024, the program reached 2333 middle and high school students across 8 schools in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Busan regions. In the post-class evaluation, 1543 students (66% response rate) completed surveys, with 1174 providing open-ended responses (76%). Qualitative analysis employed dual large language models (ChatGPT and Google Gemini) for thematic analysis and contextual sentiment classification. The curriculum achieved high engagement, with 72.1% of students rating it highly helpful and 89.2% reporting increased appreciation for life's value. Thematic analysis identified seven major themes including rediscovery of life's intrinsic value, enhanced self-worth and empathy, suicide prevention awareness, and positive attitudes toward deceased organ donation. Sentiment analysis showed predominantly positive reception, with 86% (ChatGPT) and 87% (Gemini) of responses classified as positive (97.53% inter-model agreement). This implementation study suggests that values-based education cultivating adolescents' appreciation for life's interconnection may provide a promising foundation for deceased organ donation awareness.