South Korea Struck by Online Suicide Pacts

SEOUL, South Korea, May 13, 2010— -- Nine people in South Korea have committed suicide in three separate incidents within two days. The latest was a 72-year-old man who hanged himself at a construction site in Hoengseong, Kangwon Province, Thursday, police said.

Four women and one man -- in their 20s and 30s -- were found dead Wednesday in Hwaseong, just south of Seoul, after sealing a passenger car with plastics sheets and inhaling toxic fumes from burned coal briquettes.

They left suicide notes saying, "I have no more hope and no more dreams" and "please find my identification card in my back pocket."

Police were investigating their motive but assumed that the man recruited the four women on the Internet to participate in a group suicide.

Earlier in another city east of Seoul, Chuncheon, three men in their 20s were also found dead at a private room-for-rent lodge using the same method and sealing the door and windows with dark masking tape from inside the room they were sharing.

Police assumed that they, too, were driven by group suicide pacts cultivated online.

Such news is common here where the suicide rate is the highest among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development group of developed countries.

An average of 35.1 people killed themselves everyday in 2008, according to the health ministry. That's 24.3 for every 100,000 South Koreans, followed by 21 in Hungary, 19.4 in Japan, 16.7 in Finland and 15.8 in Belgium.

The National Statistics Office reported that the suicides are related to the economic downturn, as well as rapid social change within the family and the community.

Korean society in recent years has been plagued by continuous cases of suicide among celebrities, high-profile politicians and businessmen, teenagers and the elderly. Analysts say the most common cause is depression stemming from social and academic pressures or family troubles.

"There's a huge gap in this country because the speed of materialism spreading is much faster than the speed of cultural maturity that must grow together. It all comes from stress of rapid modernization," said Jeung Taek-Hee, an expert and consultant at Lifeline Korea.