*Purpose: The shortage of deceased organ donation is a challenge for most countries. In the media era, the role of social media is becoming important in all fields. This study analyzed the relationship between public sentiment expressed in social media comments and organ donation in Korea.

*Methods: The words ‘organ transplantation’ and ‘organ donation’ were crawled from January 2004 to October 2019 through NAVER, a Korean Internet portal site. Unrelated articles and duplicate comments were excluded. The ratio of positive comments (%) (= number of positive comments / total number of comments x 100) was compared with the number of organ transplantation and donation.

*Results: Of a total of 41407 media reports and 206438 comments, 31834 media reports and 101524 comments were analyzed after excluding unrelated articles and duplicate comments. There was a significant correlation between the percentage of positive comments and the number of organ donors after 1 year (rho = 0.94, p = 0.0048, Spearman’s rank correlation; B = 13.01, p < 0.001, generalized linear model). The percentage of positive comments increased from 19.39% to 37.68% in a year before and after the article on the cardinal's organ donation, while it decreased from 27.35% to 20.91% in a year before and after the article on insufficient post-donation management.

*Conclusions: Public sentiments expressed in social media comments had a significant effect on the number of organ donation and transplantation in Korea. In addition, the proportion of positive comments that depend on the content of social media articles suggests the importance of the media in promoting organ donation.

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