A Republic of Korea hospital suspended most services on Sunday after being identified as the epicenter of the spread of a deadly respiratory disease that has killed 15 people since being diagnosed in the country nearly four weeks ago.

The World Health Organization has called an emergency meeting for Tuesday on the ROK's "large and complex" outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, the biggest outside Saudi Arabia, where it was first identified in humans in 2012.

MERS was diagnosed in the ROK on May 20 in a businessman who had returned from a trip to the Middle East and has spread through hospitals.