The decision marks the first court ruling of its kind in South Korea.

The court said there are enough indications to assume the patient, Ms Kim Ok Kyung, would have wanted to be removed from the respirator if she knew of her condition.

Doctors at major hospitals in Seoul agree that the 76-year-old patient has no chance of coming out of her coma and could live for as long as three to four months, the ruling said.

The court cautioned, however, that the ruling does not deal with 'proactive euthanasia' and does not mean that family members have the right to independently ask to end medical treatment for loved ones.

But the ruling acknowledged an individual's right to die for the first time here and rekindled debate on euthanasia. The current law bans any form of assisted suicide and sees the removal of a respirator from a brain-dead patient as murder.

Ms Kim was declared brain-dead at Seoul's Severance Hospital in February after suffering brain damage and falling into a coma while undergoing a lung examination.

Three months later, her children filed a court petition after the hospital rejected their request that she be allowed to die in peace and with dignity.

The family claimed that extending her life using medical devices would prolong her 'painful and meaningless' existence.

'The patient can ask doctors to remove life support if it causes physical and mental pain and hurts human dignity and personality,' Judge Kim Chon Soo said in his ruling.

He said the family's request should be accepted in consideration of Ms Kim's 'hopeless state with no chance of recovery', even if she could not herself express her desire.

'Considering her hopeless state, the expected years left in her life and her age, the patient is assumed to have expressed her wish to die a natural death with the respirator removed,' the judge said.

However, he stressed that his ruling was limited to those for whom medical treatment has no impact and who are presumed to want to stop treatment.

The hospital has yet to decide whether to appeal the ruling, according to the Korea Times.

Medical circles hailed the verdict, according to the Korea Times.

'Our position is death with dignity should be permitted in cases in which the patient doesn't want to be a burden to his or her family and the family doesn't want their beloved to continue suffering,' Mr Kim Joo Kyung, spokesman for the Korean Medical Association of doctors, was quoted as saying.

Local religious communities have been split on the subject of euthanasia.

In 2004, a family was convicted of murder for removing life-support systems from a brain-dead relative. A doctor was charged with aiding murder.

Last year, a father was given a four-year suspended jail term for the removal of a respirator from his brain-dead son.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS