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Why more and more people (and artists) are killing themselves in South Korea

2023-04-20 20:43:52Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Why more and more people (and artists) are killing themselves in South Korea
MOONBIN, SULLI, GOO HARA AND JONGHYUN

The tragic case of K-Pop star Moonbin, 25, brought attention to the high number of South Korean artists who die at a young age. Although the cause of death has not yet been confirmed, suicide has been hinted at. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case.

Several other young K-pop stars have died in recent years. For example Goo Hara in November 2019 who was blackmailed by her ex-boyfriend for their sex videos. The suspected suicide comes a month after her close friend and K-pop star Sulli killed herself after a long battle with online bullying. In 2018, 33-year-old Minwoo died at home and his management company said only that he suffered a cardiac arrest. A little over three months ago, SHINee's singer Jonghyun died of a suspected suicide. He was 27 years old.

K-pop stars are taken into management by agencies at a young age - usually in their early or mid-teens - and live under strict control, with their days mostly spent training for hours upon hours.

However, suicides in South Korea do not only affect artists, but also ordinary people.

26 out of every 100,000 people, about 13,300 Koreans, killed themselves in 2021, an increase of 0.3 percent compared to the previous year, according to data from the national statistics office.

In February, new data showed that South Korea, despite technological progress, has one of the lowest levels of satisfaction.

Loneliness, rising household debt and a lack of free time have all been cited as factors that have lowered Korea's so-called "happiness score" to 5.9, well below the OECD average of 6.7.

A society 'not generous' to people's mistakes

South Korea's mental health crisis has also been attributed to high-pressure school and work environments, unemployment, the lack of a safety net for the elderly, and the spread of cultural values ​​that stigmatize poor mental health.

HeaKyung Kwon, a Korean-American psychotherapist in New York says that depression is present in young and old people who don't feel empowered.

"Especially among young people, there's a lot of pressure to always be the role model, to never get it wrong," she says, citing the fierce competition to get into South Korea's small number of elite universities and the intense investment of parents in their education.

"They tell their children, 'we're spending this money, so you should definitely have a career,' so they're under pressure and at a certain point they feel they can't live up to their parents' wishes and expectations." that they have", she says.

Life is also difficult for Korea's aging population. In addition to having to deal with isolation, in 2021, 1.6 million senior citizens were living alone as the country lacks a strong social service system.

The rising number of suicides in Korea has caused the Ministry of Health to view mental health as a major problem, something it has never done before.

In a statement this week, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOH) acknowledged that political support to help curb the problem was "desperately needed", adding that they have a suicide prevention program in place.

Mental health remains 'taboo'

A paper last year in the Harvard International Review showed that in Korea, mental health remains a taboo.

"In 2017, almost one in four South Koreans suffered from a mental disorder, but only one in ten received treatment, citing a mentality that still considered the subject "taboo".

In the paper, it is written that there are programs and policies in the country, but the biggest problem is that the victims are the first ones who are not aware of those programs.

Experts also attribute the country's "very serious" suicide rate to rapid industrialization, which, they say, lifted the country out of post-Korean war poverty but caused a rise in individualism and the breakdown of traditional community ties.

"We had to build our country from scratch. We have very limited resources so we have to compete with each other. There's a lot of pressure to be successful," Kwon says.


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