It's an odd news day here in Seoul. ABC is carrying not one, but two suicide related articles. The first, about the suicide of the 72 year old head of the Doosan Group (who own my favorite Korean baseball team, by the way) and the second about a string of apparently organized suicides across the city. I've heard from multiple sources about the absurdly high suicide rate, but these are the first incidents I've seen make the papers since I've been here.
According the the article the suicide rate in 2008 was 35 per day. That's right, I said per day. And what is the main culprit according the National Statistics office? The economic downturn. Apparently, the theory goes, children are so spoiled by their work-a-holic parents that they can't deal with competition. Of course, it has nothing to do with soul crushing academic standards or a corporate culture that prevents parents from seeing their kids more than a few hours a week (in a particularly galling part, the article mentions that corporations are trying to combat this by insisting their workers leave by 6pm at least once a month. Once a month? My, how very altruistic of you). If this is reflective of anything it's reflective of the way Korea can't seem to reconcile individualistic capitalism with traditionally powerful family obligations. I've heard numerous stories from teachers here about students who have been tracked into occupations they loath, simply because they did well on some test in the eighth grade. If the government really wants to tackle this problem, it's got to start preaching less about personal obligations and creating more personal opportunities.
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