South Korea's "Culture of Suicide"

Up-and-coming actress Jung Da-bin hanged herself in February 2007.

K-POP, or Korean popular culture, has now permeated throughout the world. In fact, Korea's two largest broadcasters, KBS and MBC, are now vying with the legendary BBC and Voice of America (VOA) to project Korean culture, arts and cinema to the world. And it appears that the global audience is lapping it up. K-POP stars have mesmerized the world audience with their stunning good looks (often achieved through plastic surgery), charm and grace.

But behind the world-famous glam that is K-POP, there's a sad tale. Since 2007, there has been a string of high-profile suicides of K-POP stars who were in their 20s and 30s. While this statistic is scientifically insignificant, we thought that it might prove to be a sentinel indicator. And yes, it turns out to be so. In 2006, South Korea had the highest suicide rate of all the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the elite club of the world's 24 richest countries) member countries. See http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/158160.html .

Clearly, Korean society -- like that of Japan -- is not easy to negotiate for those who deviate (or are perceived to do so) from the narrow normative parameters. Here's one commentator's take on suicide and Korean culture. We don't necessarily subscribe to his thesis, but it is worth a read.

Well, one thing worth thinking about -- I think the nastiness is partially enabled by 1) lazy moderators on sites, and 2) the particularly extreme nastiness of the Korean internet.

Now, before people go off saying this is "racist" or whatnot, I'll say that I place this all squarely within a framework of causality -- not just "Koreans are essentially, genetically X."

There is an extreme amount of competition for scarce resources in this society, ranging from less space-per-person, how standardized tests rule everything, the extreme militarized hierarchy of society, and the general amount of mental trauma that has not at all been dealt with throughout the entire 20th century.

Take a country ravaged by invasion and colonization for 36 years, forced labor and military conscription through World War II, then "liberation" by a new set of neo-colonizers, then a devastating war that ravaged the nation and rent family ties asunder, which was then followed by dictatorship, torture, and the constant threat of force by the government on labor unions, activists, and anyone else who bothered to question authority, coupled with the crushing of organized labor and the democracy movement (within a nominal democracy, right? the irony) in Kwangju, and the constant "scare" and suspicion that one's neighbor was a "Commie" -- and then suddenly, the economy is great-n-the-80's, people are toting Prada bags and Beamers (or wanting to), and busy enjoying themselves -- or trying not to think about the massive collective trauma inflicted upon them.

Read more at http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/korean_pop_culture/