By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
Three citizens were found dead last week, apparently from asphyxiation. Police found briquette ash and portable stove sets beside them at the scenes and believe they committed copycat suicides following the death of actor Ahn Jae-hwan, who apparently killed himself earlier this month using toxic fumes.
On Friday, a 65-year-old was found dead in a vehicle parked on a road in Gangwon Province. Burned-out briquette ash and a portable stove were found at the scene, police said.
On Sunday, in two separate cases, a 35-year-old and a 36-year-old were also found dead in similar circumstances at an apartment construction spot in Ulsan, North Gyeingsang Province and a hotel room in Gangwon Province.
Police believe the three adopted the same method as the late actor Ahn as there have hardly been any similar cases of people killing themselves by inhaling gas from burning briquettes recently.
Even worse, hundreds of articles and comments regarding ``how to commit suicide using toxic fumes'' are being posted on the nation's major portal Web sites.
Experts indicated a number of media reports that vividly described how the actor took his life using toxic fumes as a major culprit behind the copycat suicides. ``They must be victims of the Werther Effect,'' Hong Gang-eui, head of the Korean Association for Suicide Prevention, told The Korea Times.
The Werther Effect is defined as the duplication of another suicide that the person attempting suicide found out about either through local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide reported on TV and other media.
``For people seeking a reliable way to end their lives, such reports become a good information source,'' Hong said. ``In some suicide cases, especially when a celebrity is involved, Korean media tend to churn out in-depth reports to draw public attention. Meanwhile, they never take into account how serious the side effects of such reports are.''
He called on media outlets not to report suicide cases involving celebrities in depth in order to ward off possible copycat suicides.