Students and Suicide

Al Jazeera recently ran this story about Korea's ballooning suicide rate among students and teens. Currently, South Korea has the highest rate of suicide among all developed nations. Only in impoverished post-Soviet Latvia do more people take their own lives. Around 40 South Koreans each and every day of the year die at their own hand.

In South Korea, teen suicide has risen by over one-third in the past ten years. AJ notes that the intense, almost-single-minded, drive for academic and then subsequent professional success is a big part of the problem. Certainly, other issues are at work too. But all too many younger South Koreans have (had) a friend, classmate, or acquaintance who committed suicide because they felt they just couldn't compete in this oh-so-competitive of cultures. The competition for entrance into the nation's top universities is truly brutal. Entrance to these schools, unlike in the West - where a variety of factors are weighed during the admissions process, is determined almost solely by students' performance on the big scary national university entrance exam. Which the entire country is subjected to.

One test. One day. Your whole future rides on it, and the hopes and pressures of your entire family are all wrapped up in it. Unlike in Western countries, virtually all students feel pressured to shoot for a limited number of spots at the top few schools. (Koreans usually talk about S.K.Y. schools - an acronym for Seoul National, Korea U., and Yonsei U.) Rejection by these elite schools is inevitable for most students, but the shame of not being successful is so burdensome that many students can see no way to go on if they bomb the one big test that determines the entire outcome of their lives.

Many expats living in South Korea were greatly shocked to hear President Obama recently praise Korea's educational system as a model for failing American schools. Korean schools have a lot of very serious problems - the biggest one being that kids are often pretty miserable. And this is most conspicuous fallout: