The Causes of Suicide in South Korea

         South Koreans and K-pop fans worldwide were devastated with the news of popular boy group, Super Junior's leader, Lee Teuk's father and grandparents death. Car accident was the said to be the cause of the death but now investigators found that it was possibly suicide.

         South Korea has the #1 suicide rate in the world. So Lee Teuk's story is not just his story, but something that all of Korean citizens can relate to. From the outside, it can be hard to determine the cause of such a high suicidal rate. After all, Korea is a prosperous country, what could drive its citizens to suicide?

         Of course, not all Koreans are suicidal nor do they all know anyone personally who has committed suicide but the highest suicide rate in the world is saying something. Among the young adults, the primary reason may be schoolwork. At least for high school students in South Korea, sooneung (수능), a college entry exam, is everything. I've heard of stories of people crying after taking their exams because they feel that they've done poorly, and I've heard one of those people say that later on, they looked back and realized it wasn't that much of a big deal. So what needs to be instituted to ease the high school students' stress and anxiety due to sooneung is a program(s) that reaches out to high school students to let them know that sooneung really is not a matter of life and death.

          The second major cause of suicide in Korea, that I found, was family issues. Family issues is not a foreign concept here in America, but here's the difference in Korea: it's still considered embarrassing if you're parents are divorced. Of course American kids with divorced parents feel similarly but here, kids are able to be more open about it and in one of my elementary schools (as I've attended multiple ones), there was even an after-school program for kids with divorced parents. It's a rare case for American students to hide the fact that their parents are divorced, but in Korea, it's a common thing. Both of my parents have half-siblings and I heard that they tried to hide that fact when they were younger. Even though that was something of their days, its still evident in modern-day Korea. So like here, there should be programs and clubs where students who have divorced parents can go to for assistance and counseling.

         So from my two main causes of suicide I've stated, we can know that Korea lacks programs of counseling and support. Korea is a civilized country but it needs to do a better job of educating its younger generation of what matters more in life.


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