Hidden crisis behind Korea’s suicide numbers

Korea is a country that has grown accustomed to confronting grim statistics on suicide. Year after year, Korea tops the OECD charts in self-inflicted deaths, and the issue has become a dark constant in the national psyche. Whenever I consume Korean media, I can’t avoid the news about suicide cases, from poverty-stressed individuals to celebrities bullied by fans. Yet behind those already sobering numbers lies a quieter, more haunting reality: The persistence of murder-suicides in families, and, in particular, the killing of one’s own children followed by suicide.

I just read those grim statistics recently released by Korea’s National Assembly Research Service: A total of about 108,000 suicide deaths were recorded between 2013 and 2020, of which 416 were murder-suicides and 1,519 were “suicide pacts,” where multiple people agreed to die by suicide together. The vast majority of the murder-suicide cases involved killing a spouse, children or other family members. Strikingly, the proportion of parents killing their children followed by suicide is far higher than what is seen in many other countries.

This murder-suicide pattern is not exclusive to Korea. It is generally linked to crises such as economic hardship, family discord or mental illness in other societies as well. And we cannot easily judge the motives, because each case may be deeply personal and unique and we cannot look into their minds. Yet in Korea, the frequency and form it takes deserve close attention, as well as the potential cultural factors that intensify the risk, especially when murder-suicides involve children.

One can argue that at the heart of this tragic reality lies the traditional view of the family as a tightly bound unit, where parents bear near-absolute responsibility for their children’s destiny. And in moments of overwhelming crisis like unemployment, debt, divorce or illness, children may be seen not as independent beings but as extensions of the parents' own fate. Within such reasoning, ending a child’s life is rationalized as protecting them from suffering. The enduring weight of parental authority in Korean culture, coupled with a weaker recognition of children’s autonomy and individual rights, makes this logic tragically thinkable.

Mental health stigma adds another layer of risk. Parents facing depression or burnout often avoid seeking treatment, fearing shame or discrimination. Their struggles remain hidden until despair erupts. The cultural emphasis on preserving family honor can also discourage disclosure, making outside intervention less likely. Therefore, the combination of cultural expectations, limited support systems and silence around mental health makes the ground fertile for these tragedies.

Breaking this tragic pattern will require both domestic reform and lessons from abroad. The United States, though still grappling with high numbers of familicide, has developed community-based crisis hotlines and “safe haven” laws that allow parents in acute distress to surrender infants without penalty — policies that aim to prevent desperate acts before they happen. In several European countries, strong welfare protections and state-funded counseling services ensure that parents facing unemployment or illness have access to immediate assistance, reducing the sense of isolation that often precedes murder-suicide.

Korea can draw from these models. More comprehensive child-care services, stronger support for single parents, and rapid-response counseling for families in financial or health crises would provide critical lifelines. Legal and cultural emphasis on children’s rights must also be strengthened, so that children are recognized as individuals whose futures cannot be decided by a parent’s despair. Above all, mental health care should be normalized, with confidential, affordable counseling available in schools, workplaces and local communities.

While suicides can be deeply personal and complicated, the deaths of children in murder-suicides reveal more than personal crises. They reflect the interaction of cultural values, social pressures and untreated despair. Korea cannot view these cases as isolated events. Each one is a reminder that protecting the most vulnerable requires cultural change, institutional reform and a willingness to learn from the policies of other nations.

Min Seong-jae (smin@pace.edu) is a professor of communication and media studies at Pace University in New York.