Suicide in Korea Series: II. The Numbers

[Series Index]

Before there can be any meaningful discussion about suicides in Korea, we need a clear picture on the facts about suicides first. Looking at the demographics and trends in suicide, one can glean the starting point on understanding the suicide phenomenon in Korea.

If you can read Korean, Statistics Korea -- the governmental body that periodically collects national statistics -- has the official collection of Korean death statistics. Here are highlights of suicide-related information that the Korean culled from the overall statistics. Table numbers in the bracket refer to the table numbers in the Statistics Korea page.

Who Commits Suicide?

- [Table 4] Overall, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in Korea as of 2009. But incredibly, when the cause of death is broken down by age, suicide is the leading cause of death for Koreans between the ages of 10 and 39. The large number of people dying from cancer beginning at age 40 end up pushing down suicide's ranking.

- [Table 6] In 2009, 15,413 Koreans died from suicide, which is 6.24% of all deaths in Korea that year. For the sake of comparison, the leading cause of death was cancer, which constituted 28.6% of all deaths.

- [Table 6] The number of suicides in 2009, broken down by age and gender:

Age	Male	Female	Total	Male/Total
10-19	247	199	446	0.55
20-29	932	875	1,807	0.52
30-39	1,528	1,114	2,642	0.58
40-49	2,010	846	2,856	0.7
50-59	1,965	632	2,597	0.76
60-69	1,530	544	2,074	0.74
70-79	1,191	708	1,899	0.63
80+	521	557	1,078	0.48

(Apologies if the tables turn out to be a little wacky -- Blogger does not seem to handle tables very well.)

One can see that the number of suicides peaks at ages 40-49 for men and 30-39 for women. Also notable is that the ratio between male and female suicides. Worldwide, suicide is overwhelmingly a male phenomenon -- in the OECD, male to female suicide rate is more than 3 to 1, or approximately 77% of all suicides. But in Korea, the number of male suicides never goes over 77% -- which means Korean women are far more suicidal than average women living in comparable economies.

(More after the jump)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.



- [Table 7] The mortality rate, and the mortality rate involving suicide, broken down by age and gender:

	Total Deaths (per 100,000)			Suicides (per 100,000)			Suicides/Total Deaths (%)
	Total	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female
All ages	497.3	553.7	440.7	31	39.9	22.1	6.23
10-19	44.3	53.6	33.5	13	13.5	12.4	29.35
20-29	111.9	131.8	90.4	49.6	49.7	49.7	44.33
30-39	182.3	227.2	135.5	62.7	70.9	54.2	34.39
40-49	412.7	589.7	229.6	65.7	90.8	39.6	15.92
50-59	892.2	1326.3	457.9	82	123.8	40.1	9.19
60-69	2023.7	3012.8	1149.5	104	162.8	51.6	5.14
70-79	5893.6	8529.5	4227.3	162.6	257.5	101.8	2.76
80+	37928.2	47543.9	34534	394.2	671.8	295.2	1.04

One can see that the mortality rate involving suicide increases dramatically as the age goes up. This is contrary to the worldwide trend, where people proportionately commit less suicide as they get older. However, that is slightly misleading because it gives the inaccurate impression that older Koreans die mostly by suicide. So the last column was added to give a perspective of the proportion of suicides to total deaths. One can see that it comports with the data from Table 4 above, that for people aged 10 to 39, suicide is the leading cause of death -- partially because of the prevalence of suicide, partially because younger people are healthier and are less likely to die from causes other suicide (e.g. diseases).

- [Table 11] Suicides broken down by occupation, ages 15-64.

Occupation	Total Deaths	Suicides	Suicide/Total Deaths (%)
Total	74 347	11 251	6.61
Managers	1 545	220	7.02
Professionals	3 666	589	6.22
Clerks	5 204	961	5.42
Service and Sales	7 494	1 304	5.75
Agriculture, Horticulture and Maritime	5 001	464	10.78
Craft & Related Trade	2 742	361	7.6
Plant & Machine Operators	1 349	188	7.18
Manual Laborers	3 417	458	7.46
Unemployed, Students, Homemakers	41 707	6 280	6.64
Other	2 222	426	5.22

Here, the notable part is that while the proportion of suicides is high among all occupations, farmers and fishermen apparently have a significantly higher suicide rate. This is consistent with the fact that older Koreans are more likely to commit suicide, because most farmers and fishermen in Korea tend to be older as the younger people all left for the city.

Yearly Trends

- [Table 5] shows that suicide has been around 7th or 8th leading cause of death between 1999 to 2002. Then the ranking jumps in 2003 to 5th leading cause of death. Between 2002 and 2003, the mortality rate attributable to suicide (per 100,000) jumped from 17.9 to 22.6. Between 2003 and 2009, suicide was either 4th or 5th leading cause of death in Korea.

- [Table 8] Mortality rate (per 100,000) attributable to suicide, from 1999 to 2009

	Overall Mortality Rate			Suicide Mortality Rate			Change vs Prev. Yr (%)
	Total	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female
1999	520.2	576.0	464.0	15.0	20.9	9.0	n/a	n/a	n/a
2000	517.9	571.9	463.3	13.6	18.8	8.3	(9.33)	(10.05)	(7.78)
2001	504.5	557.8	450.7	14.4	20.2	8.6	5.88	7.45	3.61
2002	509.7	557.9	461.2	17.9	24.6	11.1	24.31	21.78	29.07
2003	506.1	556.6	455.4	22.6	31.0	14.1	26.26	26.02	27.03
2004	503.7	556.1	451.0	23.7	32.4	14.9	4.87	4.52	5.67
2005	501.0	550.5	451.1	24.7	32.9	16.4	4.22	1.54	10.07
2006	495.6	545.7	445.2	21.8	29.5	14.1	(11.74)	(10.33)	(14.02)
2007	498.4	547.9	448.7	24.8	31.5	18.1	13.76	6.78	28.37
2008	498.2	553.1	443.0	26.0	33.4	18.7	4.84	6.03	3.31
2009	497.3	553.7	440.7	31.0	39.9	22.1	19.23	19.46	18.18

For the purpose of understanding Korea’s suicide phenomenon, this chart may be the most helpful one. The first thing that jumps out is the sheer magnitude of increase. The overall mortality rate in Korea steadily decreased in Korea for the last ten years, but suicide mortality rate more than doubled. At 31 suicides per 100,000, Korea’s suicide mortality rate is nearly three times the OECD average of 11.1. Even more astonishing is that Korea’s suicide mortality rate was only 7.4 per 100,000 back in 1989 – in other words, the suicide rate doubled between 1989 and 1999, and doubled again between 1999 and 2009.

Another notable point is the rate of change between men and women. In the five years between 1999 and 2003, the suicide rate for both men and women rose and fell at an approximately same rate. But between 2004 and 2009 (and particularly in 2007,) the rate of women suicide increased dramatically.

Why Commit Suicide?

On a separate page of Statistics Korea, there is more information about suicidal impulses and what causes them.

- [Table 12] Suicidal impulse in 2010.

	Suicidal Impulse Felt
Total	7.7
Male	6.3
Female	9.0
Age
15-19	10.1
20-29	7.5
30-39	7.7
40-49	8.6
50-59	8.2
60+	5.3

- [Table 12] Causes of suicidal impulse

	Economic difficulties	Relation-ship/Dating	Disease/ disability	Job	Loneli-ness	Family issues	School grades	Dispute in social life	Other
Total	38.8	3.5	11.2	6.4	12.9	15.1	6.6	0.8	4.7
Male	44.9	3.7	11.3	9.8	11.0	8.6	6.9	0.6	3.2
Female	34.6	3.3	11.1	4.1	14.1	19.6	6.4	1.0	5.7
Age
15-19	10.5	1.9	2.2	1.6	11.2	12.6	53.4	3.8	2.8
20-29	30.0	7.0	5.9	15.0	16.5	12.9	5.3	1.0	6.4
30-39	37.4	3.4	4.8	9.5	17.4	20.5	-	1.0	6.0
40-49	50.4	2.6	8.4	4.7	10.7	17.5	-	0.3	5.5
50-59	52.7	3.3	14.2	4.4	9.4	14.1	-	-	2.0
60+	35.3	2.4	36.2	1.2	11.4	8.8	-	-	4.6

This chart may as well be called: “What stresses out Koreans.” The factors that stand out in this chart are not particularly surprising. School-year children are stressed out by grades. People in their 20s are worried about jobs, relationship and being alone. Middle-aged people are concerned about making a living, and older people are worried about their health.

One notable thing is that consistent with the world trend, older people tend to feel less suicidal – which conflicts with the actual result in which older Korean are proportionately more likely to commit suicide, as discussed above.

The Takeaways

Among the many insights could be gleaned from this set of data, the Korean would highlight the following:

- The factors that causes suicidal impulse for Koreans are not particularly surprising. The surprising part is that a huge number of Koreans carry out the impulse to practice.

- Although suicide numbers are high in all demographics of Koreans, women and the elderly are particularly at risk compared to the worldwide trend.

- Korea's suicide phenomenon is a very recent phenomenon. About 20 years ago, Korea actually had a low suicide rate. Even as recently as 10 years or so ago, Korea's suicide rates were not out of step with the world average. So what happened to Korea around 10 years ago? That will be the starting point of our inquiry.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.