By Kim Se-jeong
Parents will soon be able to receive an alert message if their children talk about suicide in text messages or search such words online.
The Ministry of Education said Friday it was pushing such a measure in an effort to curb the student suicide rate. It will be available from April.
Last year, 118 students killed themselves across the country. In 2013, the number was 123.
Critics say the service could violate children’s privacy and fail to tackle more essential problems students face.
The alerts will be provided through smartphones. Parents and children will have to download an application to activate the service. The app recognizes almost 1,000 keywords related to suicide. When children type in a word that matches one of them, the app will send a message to their parents.
The app was originally developed to monitor school violence, and has been downloaded 3,000 times since January.
The new measure is a reminder of Korea’s high suicide rate. Although the rate among students is not increasing rapidly, this issue has been a priority for Minister Hwang, according to ministry officials.
The statistics show between 2009 and 2014, 878 students, from elementary through high school, took their lives.
Distress from family problems was the top cause, followed by poor academic performance and bullying by peers.
Early suicide detection is critical to solving the problem, but that has been difficult, experts say.
School teachers conduct surveys annually to check on children’s emotional and behavioral patterns. Experts say they are far from sufficient.
The ministry announced other measures to prevent suicide. Among them was to lock access to apartment, school or public building rooftops, where most student suicide attempts occur.
The ministry will push for a “psychological autopsy” on victims to better understand their state of mind.
The government will also establish training programs for school principals and teachers so they can detect suicidal behavior.
Some critics are skeptical about the measures.
“The root cause of the high suicide rate is excessive competition in the classroom and a set of values which only give credits to top students,” the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union said.
“Monitoring children’s phones or locking rooftops will not be an ultimate solution. What they need are care and attention and an environment where they are respected for who they are, not for the scores they get.”