코리아타임뉴스 안창현 기자 | South Korea is widely recognized as an economic and cultural powerhouse. Life expectancy in the country has reached 83.5 years, 2.4 years longer than the OECD average, while preventable and treatable mortality rates are also lower than the OECD averages. Advances in medical technology and living conditions have enabled Koreans to live longer than ever before.

 

Yet while the length of life has increased, far too many people are losing the will to continue living.

 

According to the OECD’s latest health indicators, South Korea’s age-standardized suicide rate stands at approximately 23 deaths per 100,000 people, more than twice the OECD average of around 11. South Korea has become a country where people live longer, but it has not yet become a country that adequately protects their reasons for living.

 

The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 727,000 people die by suicide worldwide every year. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 29. For every person who dies by suicide, many more attempt it.

 

The WHO does not regard suicide merely as an act caused by personal weakness or a momentary decision. It defines suicide as a serious public health issue arising from a complex combination of social, cultural, biological, psychological, and environmental factors. It also emphasizes that suicide can be prevented through timely and evidence-based intervention.

 

Nevertheless, whenever a suicide occurs in South Korea, society often attributes it to an individual’s depression, family conflict, illness, or financial failure and then quickly moves on.

 

Mental illness, economic hardship, physical disease, and family problems are indeed important risk factors. However, unless we ask why so many people repeatedly fall into similar forms of despair, we will continue to miss the essence of the problem.

 

Suicide occurs at the individual level, but behind it lies a social structure that constantly compares people, eliminates those who fall behind, and denies second chances to those who fail.

 

A Suicide Rate That Rose with Economic Crisis

 

Changes in South Korea’s suicide rate have closely followed major economic and social shocks.

 

An analysis of suicide trends between 1983 and 2022 shows that the rate rose sharply after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. It increased again during the credit card crisis in the early 2000s and after the 2008 global financial crisis. In 2011, South Korea’s suicide rate reached a peak of 31.7 deaths per 100,000 people.

 

After the Suicide Prevention Act was enacted in 2011 and national prevention policies were strengthened, the rate declined for a period. However, it began to rise again from around 2018.

 

This trend makes it difficult to explain suicide solely as an individual mental health problem. When economic recession, unemployment, household debt, business failure, and income loss shake the foundations of people’s lives, suicide rates also tend to rise.

 

A person who loses a job or fails in business may face debt, damaged credit, family breakdown, and social isolation before being given any meaningful opportunity to start over. Under such conditions, failure is no longer experienced as a temporary setback. It becomes the collapse of an entire life.

 

An analysis based on police records found that mental or psychiatric problems accounted for 39.8 percent of reported suicide motives in 2021. Economic difficulties accounted for 24.2 percent, physical illness for 17.7 percent, family problems for 6.7 percent, and workplace-related issues for 3.8 percent.

 

These figures show that mental health, economic hardship, illness, and family conflict do not exist separately. They often overlap and reinforce one another, gradually pushing a person toward the edge.

 

Competition Begins in Childhood

 

Extreme competition in South Korea does not begin in adulthood. Children enter the race long before they fully understand what competition means.

 

From kindergarten and private tutoring to gifted education and entrance examinations, children are placed in environments where they are constantly measured against others. Elementary school students prepare for selective middle and high schools, while teenagers spend their days moving between school and private academies in pursuit of admission to prestigious universities.

 

Education should help individuals discover their talents and grow into responsible members of society. Yet for decades, South Korea’s education system has divided students according to test scores, rankings, and school prestige.

 

A difference of only a few points may determine a student’s university, major, employment prospects, and future social position. The name of a university often becomes a substitute for an individual’s ability, character, and value.

 

Students are encouraged to defeat their classmates rather than learn with them. They are trained not to ask questions, but to avoid making mistakes. Under such conditions, academic failure can easily be interpreted not as one disappointing experience, but as the failure of one’s entire existence.

 

According to national mortality statistics, suicide accounted for 42.3 percent of deaths among teenagers, 50.6 percent among people in their twenties, and 37.9 percent among those in their thirties in 2022. Suicide was the leading cause of death for people in their teens, twenties, and thirties.

 

The fact that more young people die by suicide than from cancer or cardiovascular disease is a warning that the entire structure of youth life—from education and employment to housing and relationships—is deeply unstable.

 

South Korean society teaches students how to raise their grades but not how to cope with failure. It teaches them how to win, but not how to ask for help when they are emotionally overwhelmed.

 

It would be wrong to claim that competitive education directly causes every suicide. However, it is difficult to deny that a culture that judges human worth through scores and rankings weakens self-esteem and intensifies fear of failure.

 

Materialism and Endless Comparison

 

Competition does not end after graduation. It simply changes form.

 

Academic achievement is replaced by competition over employment, salary, housing, cars, promotions, and children’s education. Instead of asking what kind of person someone is, society often asks which university they attended, which company they work for, and how much they earn.

 

Money, which should be a means of maintaining life, has become a measure of success, happiness, and even human dignity.

 

This materialistic culture makes everyone anxious. No matter how much a person achieves, there will always be someone richer, more powerful, or more successful.

 

Social media intensifies this anxiety by constantly displaying luxury homes, expensive cars, overseas travel, designer goods, and carefully edited scenes of success. People compare the unedited reality of their own lives with the most polished moments of others.

 

Comparison produces relative deprivation. Relative deprivation produces shame. Eventually, people begin to believe that they have fallen irreversibly behind.

 

When economic inequality is perceived not merely as a difference in income but as a difference in one’s right to be respected, poverty and unemployment become crises of identity as well as crises of livelihood.

 

The pain is no longer simply, “I am struggling because I do not have enough money.” It becomes, “Because I do not have money, I am a failed human being.”

 

That stigma creates a deeper form of despair.

 

A Society Without Second Chances

 

A highly competitive society does not necessarily collapse if people who fail are allowed to try again. The deeper problem in South Korea is that one failure can follow a person for years.

 

Failure in university entrance examinations leaves a lasting educational label. Failure in employment creates gaps in a résumé. Business failure can lead to overwhelming debt and damaged credit. Middle-aged workers who lose their jobs often find it extremely difficult to recover their previous income or professional status.

 

National statistics show that around 60 percent of suicide deaths in 2021 occurred among people categorized as students, homemakers, or unemployed individuals. This figure alone does not prove a direct causal relationship between unemployment and suicide, but it does suggest how vulnerable people become when they lose income, social roles, daily structure, and human connections.

 

Corporate recruitment practices often penalize age and career interruptions. Financial institutions preserve records of past failure. Welfare systems sometimes require people to repeatedly prove their poverty, weakness, or inability in order to qualify for assistance.

 

Successful people are encouraged to view their achievements as the result of personal ability, while those who fail are told that their failure is entirely their own responsibility.

 

However, a society that denies second chances does not punish only those who have already failed. It also makes everyone else afraid.

 

People understand that a single job loss, illness, business collapse, or family crisis could push them downward. That fear drives them into even more extreme competition.

 

A society without second chances is not merely cruel to losers. It turns every citizen into a potential loser.

 

Poverty and Isolation in Old Age

 

The risk of suicide is not limited to young people.

 

In 2022, the suicide rate among people aged 80 and older reached 60.6 deaths per 100,000 people, far higher than the rates for most other age groups. Although elderly suicide rates have declined from their previous peaks, they remain extremely high.

 

Older adults often experience multiple losses at the same time: declining income, chronic illness, the death of spouses and friends, physical limitations, and the loss of social roles.

 

South Korea remains caught between a traditional belief that families should care for elderly relatives and a modern reality in which families increasingly lack the financial and emotional capacity to do so.

 

The state does not provide enough protection, while families struggle to carry the burden alone. Under these conditions, many older people begin to see themselves as burdens on their children and society.

 

Longer life expectancy does not automatically guarantee a happy old age. Without stable income, housing, medical care, social contact, and community support, longevity can become an extension of loneliness rather than a blessing.

 

Elderly suicide is therefore not simply the result of illness or personal isolation. It is a social problem created by poverty, gaps in care, weakened communities, and the disappearance of meaningful social roles.

 

A Country with Advanced Healthcare but Troubled Minds

 

South Korea has abundant hospital beds and advanced medical equipment.

 

The country has approximately 12.6 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared with an OECD average of around 4.2. It also has significantly more CT, MRI, and PET scanners per capita than the OECD average.

 

Yet a comparatively high percentage of Koreans report that their health is poor or very poor. Physical inactivity is also widespread, reflecting broader problems in work culture, daily life, and mental well-being.

 

South Korea has many machines capable of detecting physical abnormalities, but too few systems capable of identifying emotional danger before it becomes fatal.

 

Even when mental health services are technically available, many people delay seeking help because of stigma, concerns about medical records, fear of discrimination, financial costs, and lack of time.

 

Intervention often begins only after depression, anxiety, or addiction has become severe. Even after receiving treatment, a person may return to the same unemployment, debt, unstable housing, family conflict, or social isolation that contributed to the crisis in the first place.

 

The government’s national suicide prevention strategy aims to reduce the suicide rate significantly by 2027. Measures include more frequent mental health screening, broader diagnosis of serious mental illnesses, community-based prevention programs, monitoring of harmful online content, and support for people who have attempted suicide and for bereaved families.

 

These policies are necessary.

 

However, suicide prevention cannot be completed through counseling hotlines and mental health screening alone.

 

If a young person receives counseling and then returns to the same oppressive education and employment competition, the fundamental risk remains unchanged.

 

If an unemployed person receives psychiatric treatment but is left with debt, housing insecurity, and no income, the danger remains.

 

If a lonely elderly person is briefly counseled and then sent back to an empty home without community care, the crisis is likely to return.

 

Mental health services are essential, but they must be connected to employment, housing, welfare, debt relief, education, healthcare, and community support.

 

Look Beyond the Individual and Examine the Structure

 

Suicide never has a single cause.

 

Mental illness, poverty, physical disease, broken relationships, workplace stress, and social isolation interact and intensify one another. It is therefore dangerous to explain a person’s death through one event or one statistic.

 

Nevertheless, the recurring social pattern is clear.

 

South Korean society teaches children to get ahead of their friends. It tells young adults that falling behind in education or employment means failure. It demands that middle-aged people prove their worth through income, status, and professional success. It places subtle pressure on older people not to become burdens on their families.

 

The logic of the jungle—the idea that winners deserve everything and losers should quietly disappear—has spread throughout society.

 

The moment suicide is described solely as an individual choice, society escapes responsibility.

 

But when similar suffering repeats across generations, when suicide rates rise during economic crises, and when suicide remains the leading cause of death among young people, the problem can no longer be treated as a collection of private tragedies.

 

It is evidence of structural failure.

 

South Korea astonished the world with the speed of its economic development. It must now answer a more difficult question: How will it help those who fall behind, fail, or collapse during that process?

 

The country needs an education system that teaches cooperation rather than relentless competition. It needs employment and financial systems that allow people to recover after failure. It needs a safety net that protects older adults from poverty and isolation. It needs mental health services that anyone can use without shame, discrimination, or economic burden.

 

A truly advanced country is not simply one with a large economy or a high number of successful people.

 

It is a country where failure does not lead people to consider death.

 

It is a country where those who are emotionally unwell can ask for help without shame.

 

It is a country where no one is made to feel that poverty, unemployment, illness, or old age has reduced the value of their existence.

 

As long as the social structure that drives people toward suicide remains unchanged, teaching people the number of a crisis hotline will never be enough.

 

The question must change.

 

Instead of asking, “Why did that person die?” we must ask, “Why did our society fail to give that person enough reason and support to continue living?”

 

That question must become the starting point for solving South Korea’s suicide crisis.
 

Changhyun AN.