Korea's suicide epidemic continues unabated. The number of suicides in Korea exceeded 10,000 for the first time in 2003 and peaked at 10,898. In 2007, the suicide rate (number of suicides for every 100,000 people) was 24.8, the highest in the OECD and more than twice the OECD average of 11.9. The surge in the number of suicides is particularly noticeable among young Koreans and women.

Ryu Ji-hyung, head of mental health policies at the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs (MHWFA), says there is a lack of social welfare programs to absorb the shock of layoffs and the economic slump, while a rising divorce rate and emulating of celebrity suicides seem to have compounded the problem.

According to the research commissioned by the MHWFA in 2006, the amount of social and economic losses caused each year by suicides was between W1.2 trillion to W3.1 trillion (US$1=W1,250). The government pursued a suicide prevention policy from 2004 to 2008 whose goal was to lower the suicide rate to below 18 by 2010. But it invested only between W500 million to W600 million a year in education programs.

Experts say the best way to reduce suicide is to drastically increase the number of prevention programs. Suicide can be prevented if the attitudes of ordinary people, and not only those suffering from depression or who have already attempted to take their own lives, are changed.

In the United States during the 1960s and '70s, there was a huge debate over whether suicide was a personal choice or an issue that required government intervention. The outcome was an awareness that suicide is a social problems that can be prevented. The suicide rate in the United States is 10.1, less than half of Korea's.

Helsinki, Finland, which had been known as the suicide capital of the world until the 1990s, implemented a 10-year prevention program and lowered the rate to 18 as of 2005. Denmark, which had a suicide rate of 20 in the 1990s, conducted a nationwide awareness campaign to prevent suicides and the rate dropped to 11.

There are mental health centers at every one of the 151 state-run clinics across the country, but those facilities are also in charge of treating patients with depression, as well as checking the mental health of junior and senior high school students in their jurisdictions. So those facilities need to be expanded for them to be able to conduct suicide-prevention campaigns. The MHWFA announced a second phase of its five-year suicide prevention program in December last year and set aside a budget of W59.4 billion to support it. But only W1.3 billion will actually be spent on awareness programs, since the bulk of the budget is to build screen doors at subway platforms and other related projects.

That passive attitudes contrast starkly with measures by the Japanese government. Along with Hungary and Korea, Japan also has the highest suicide rate in the OECD. But in 2008, Japan spent 22.5 billion yen (around W288.9 billion) on various prevention programs. Dr. Lim Se-won, a psychiatrist at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, calls for a society-wide shift in awareness toward suicides that differs from the person-to-person crisis management method used until now, such as emergency counseling hotlines.