Elderly Suicide in South Korea
A few weeks back on World Mental Health Day, I wrote a post about suicide rates around the world and some takeaways I had from spending some time looking at datasets, articles as well as feedback I got on my first reddit post. On that post, I shared about a new insight I got regarding suicide rates of males vs females in different countries. I was surprised and a little disturbed to find out that male suicide rates outnumbered females’ in almost every country in the world. A few members in the r/dataisbeautiful community on reddit gave their two cents as well, which I appreciate a lot.
From that point, I have done up two other charts on reddit — one on means of suicide in the US (2012 vs 2017), and the other on comparing suicide by age group and sex in five countries (as a pleasant surprise, it got an award on it!)
One month on, I am back with some work done on the suggestions that I have received, and I’d like to share it on here. Hopefully, it means a little something.
Of the many countries that I looked at, one country that caught my eye was South Korea. The suicide rates (incidences per 100 000) increased consistently and significantly with age for both men and women (fig1). Among the five countries that I looked at in fig2 (my original reddit post), South Korea’s trend lines were considerably steep. I had a question — What is driving this increasing rate among the elderly in Korea?
With this question in mind, I decided to look into the suicide rates in Korea in more detail.
I started off looking at a graph by OECD (see fig3 below) in which South Korea really stood out. In the figure, South Korea is the one country that has the greatest increase in suicide rates from 2001 to 2011. There was a 100% increase, which also means that the rate has doubled in just one decade.
To see a more detailed breakdown and the increasing trend over that decade, I plotted the age-standardised suicide rate for each year as well, and went further to look at the figures after 2011. The rate in fig4 refers to number of suicide incidences per 100 000 persons.
(PS. As suicide rates may be influenced by the age distribution of a population, the age-standardised suicide rate is calculated by controlling for age distribution in every country. Essentially, the proportions of persons in each age group is taken to correspond with the WHO standard population.)
ECONOMIC CRASH
There is an obvious spike in 1998, which can likely be explained by the economic crash that South Korea faced in 1997. I tried to look more into the effects of this economic crisis online, and found an article by Berkeley University. Apparently, this crash that put thousands of people out of work has intensified workplace stress, and this pressure was placed on students as well. While the relationship between economic crises and increased suicide rates (presumably due to the pressures) may appear intuitive, the figures prove that the correlation is stronger than we might expect! A study I came across showed just how closely national unemployment was associated with suicide rate. Furthermore, suicide appears a more common coping mechanism in Asian cultures, who uphold the concept of ‘saving face’ instead of continuing life with little self-esteem, a mentality reminiscent of the hara-kiri culture. Although it isn’t uncommon for women to be out in the workforce as well, the responsibility of bringing home the dough still falls on men most of the time.
In 1998, the year following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, suicide rates rose about 35% overall in South Korea but the rise among men itself was greater, at 45%. Meanwhile in the same year, suicide among men rose 44% in Hong Kong and 39% in Japan.
ACCESSIBILITY TO PARAQUAT
But let’s focus on the right side of the above chart now. While South Korea’s suicide rates have increased more rapidly than any other developed country in the early 2000s, I was comforted to see that the trends have been reversing gradually, since 2011. Were things getting better now? What caused the change? Well… so I found that 2011 was the year South Korea introduced the ban on paraquat — the highly toxic weed killer commonly used for committing suicide. Parasite is commonly used for grass control, but in some countries like the US, one would require a license to purchase it as it’s highly poisonous. Most paraquat poisoning occurs through ingestion and inhalation, and the symptoms develop very quickly. If inhaled in large amounts, acute kidney failure, liver failure and respiratory failure would kick in within hours — and I guess this explains why it was such a common method of suicide. In fact, in 2006–2010, parasites alone accounted for 1 in every 5 suicides in Korea. And, this means of suicide was especially common among the elderly — topping the list of suicide methods for elderly females and coming in second for males.
Does this mean that we’ll see a significant decrease especially in the elderly age group?
I was expecting it (and hoping for it), and here’s what I got.
Elderly (60+yo) suicides are accounting for a smaller proportion of total suicide numbers in South Korea, between the 2006–2010 period and the 2011–2016 (post-ban) period. The decrease appears rather insignificant (0.7 percentage points) and is smaller than what I had expected, but what weshould keep in mind is that South Korea has an aging population. What that means is that their elderly population is taking up a larger proportion of the total population than before, hence, a disproportionate change (fall instead of rise) in suicide incidences is considerably good news!!
Even so, this is a crisis at hand and we should seek to understand why this is happening.
POVERTY
I went to look up some articles on elderly’s wellbeing in South Korea, and found an article on Asian Nikkei Review. It seems that in 2015, 45.7% of South Koreans over the age of 65 lived in poverty. But, is poverty in South Korea’s terms as bad as we think it is? Maybe not, if we’re thinking along the lines of living on below USD2 a day. In South Korea, the definition of poverty that we’re looking at is relative poverty — which refers to earning less than 50% of the median income — about USD1,515 per month. This should not be a surprise, considering that the elderly are no longer receiving a work income. However, the consequences are devastating because of an inadequate support system.
Well, there is basic old-age pension for the elderly, so there is some form of financial support. However, this sum is often inadequate for a comfortable quality of life. Because of the highly varied pension amounts based on the individual’s contribution and previous income, I couldn’t really come up with a representative figure for the pension received. But what we do know is that however little an elderly person gets out of a pension sum, the stress can be mitigated if there is a second support system for them, namely, their family.
LACK OF FAMILY SUPPORT
Sadly, though, due to a breakdown of the traditional Korean family structures, the move towards smaller nuclear families, with filial piety seeming to be fading off into a thing of the past for many households, the elderly are feeling financial pressures.
Here is what life is like for one of the elderly living in Seoul.
Son, a 70-year-old Seoul resident just wishes he had 10,000 won, or about $9, to live on per day. “That’s all I want,” he said.
His daily ritual is to head to the South Korean capital’s Pagoda Park, where he and his friends buy 2,500 won bowls of cow blood soup for lunch. “I think it’s the cheapest in the country,” said Son, who gave only his surname. “Afterward, we go for 200 won coffee.”
Son draws a basic monthly pension of 250,000 won from the government but ends up with very little after paying his bills. “I can’t even heat my room as much as I want. I turn it on for a while and turn it off again to save money.”
Unlike another article which gave me the idea that many of the elderly are taking their lives because they’re being left behind in the countryside while their children seek better prospects in the city, this anecdote above as well as other articles have shown that elderly in the city itself are facing challenges that are driving them to suicide as well. What is common between elderly in the city and in the countryside is that as parents, they choose to end their lives for fear of being a burden to their children.
But this fear isn’t unique to parents and elderly in South Korea. It is a driving force for many of our seniors all over the world.
