While the country's overall suicide rate has been on a steady decline, the rate of suicide among young people in their teens through their 30s is rising every year. According to a report on the leading causes of death released by Statistics Korea, the suicide rate was 25.7 per 100,000 people last year, down 1.2 from 2019.
The overall figure decreased due largely to a decline in suicides among older people. The suicide rate among people aged 80 or above has nearly halved from 123.3 in 2010 to 62.3 last year. The rate for those in their 70s and 60s also dropped over the same period.
However, suicide was the No. 1 cause of deaths among young people. Suicide accounted for 41.1 percent of teen deaths last year, 54.4 percent of deaths of people in their 20s, and 39.4 percent of those in their 30s. In 2020, 3,660 people between the ages of 10 and 39 took their own lives.
Most worrisome are women in their 20s, whose suicide rate surged 16.5 percent to 19.3 per 100,000 last year. Over a five-year period the rate has soared 55.2 percent, with some analysts attributing this to gender discrimination in the labor market. The suicide rate among male 20-somethings rose 10.2 percent to 23.8 per 100,000 last year.
It's not easy to clearly uncover what is driving young people to kill themselves, but economic difficulties caused by chronic unemployment are being partially blamed. The de facto jobless rate, which is based on the number of unemployed and underemployed in the economically active population, is hovering at over 20 percent among people aged 15 to 29.
The Moon Jae-in administration says youth unemployment is improving, citing statistical data, which can be deceptive by counting large swaths of temporary or contract workers as employed. The continuous rise in suicide among young people must be taken seriously. It's long past time for the government to come up with a comprehensive relief package for young people.