Suicide in Korea

[Chimera]

Originally posted by sheherazade:

adiga maxaa kugu watey all this suicide gathering? It's grim.

I love South Korea, and have enjoyed the films & Tv shows by some of these late actors and actresses, which is why this topic interests me.

 

Some more info on this girl:

 

Originally posted by Somali Psycho:

Jang Ja Yun’s Manager Speaks Out About Secret Abuse

 

March 13, 2009

 

Recently deceased Boys Over Flowers actress Jang Ja Yun past and possible reasons for her suicide are beginning to surface. First it was reported that she died of depression and there were even reports saying that her manager stated she was murdered, well, that might be true... to some extent.

 

It has now been exposed that the up and coming actress was beaten and forced to sleep with the Production Director (PD). Her manager is now revealing the gruesome first hand accounts of the suffering and assaults against her, despite her family not wanting this information to be leaked. Jang Ja Yun hand wrote documents listing her tragedies. Before her death, she asked her manager to expose the person responsible for her attacks. She told him she didn't want her family to think she died of just depression but from something far worse.

 

The manager has yet to reveal more specifics regarding the documents but he did state the contents to be very shocking and disturbing. He only said so far that there were incidents at room saloons and bars, and being forced to sleep with the PD. Other abuse include being physically beaten with water bottles and receiving threatening text messages. All this abuse took place in the past year and even just week before she committed suicide, she went to the head of her company to ask for help from the harassment. But she was beaten and told to just endure it.

 

She confessed in her letters that she was forced to do the dirty deeds, because she had no money and was emotionally weak. Jang Ja Yun's manager made a public statement that although exposing her truth to the police and media is going against her family's wishes, he wants to see the person pay / punished for her death.

 

The manager is cooperating with police to bring the PD in question to justice. Currently, the PD is in Japan.

 

It's been reported that the manager has tried to commit suicide also after revealing this statement and is currently hospitalized. He tried to commit suicide to avoid any backlash from exposing the truth about Jang Ja Yun.

 

http://asianfanatics.net/forum/topic/635403-late-jang-ja-yun-was-forced-to-have-sex-with-showbiz-vip s/

[Chocolate and Honey]

What the hell is going on? I love South Korean drama!

I loved Boys before Flowers. I think their cultures places high price on success.

[Chimera]

Elevator camera shows South Korean teen before suicide jump

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REPORTING FROM SEOUL — The video footage is chilling.

 

An apartment surveillance camera shows a uniform-clad 17-year-old old high school girl only moments before she committed suicide in the city of Daejeon this month. The tape shows the girl examining her image in the elevator mirror before pushing the button for the 14th floor, where she jumped to her death.

 

Authorities say the girl, an only daughter, had suffered bullying at school and her death has raised a cry for new laws against the cruel practice.

 

South Korea has one of the world's highest rates of teen suicide. Last year, 146 students ages 6 to 18 took their own lives. Nearly 71% of deaths among teenagers were attributed to suicide.

 

“Our daughter committed suicide because she was an outcast and did not get any help even from her teacher,” the girl’s family said in an Internet posting, calling for students and the teacher to be punished severely.

 

The victim’s 24-year-old cousin also filed a posting under the title, “Do you know anything about the suicide of a high school girl in Daejeon?”

 

“She suffered from bullying and others considered her an outcast since September. She asked for help, but the teacher” was indifferent, the posting said.

 

The surveillance camera tape taken before the girl’s death has been made public on his blog. It shows the girl, her hair long and straight, wearing a backpack, leave the elevator on the second floor, where she lives with her family.

 

Moments later, the footage shows her re-entering the elevator and after staring at herself in the mirror, she presses the button for the 14th floor.

 

The South Korean press reported Friday that authorities at the school have denied that the teacher ignored the girl’s pleas.

 

They said the teacher advised the student to talk with her classmates. “The best answer is to talk and solve it with them. Then, they made an appointment to meet the teacher the next day since the teacher in charge said she felt ill,” said a school official.

 

They added that they have begun an investigation into the incident.

 

In this high-pressure East Asian nation, residents are taking their lives at a rate that is three times higher than two decades ago. The rise has given South Korea the highest suicide rate among the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

 

The nation's rate of self-inflicted deaths is sizably higher than those of other nations in the organization, according to 2009 statistics, the most recent available. In South Korea, 15,413 took their lives that year, or 28.4 for every 100,000 residents. That was higher than Japan's 19.4 and twice the average rate of other OECD nations.

 

To make matters worse, experts here estimate that the suicides represent only 10% of the attempted suicides. -

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/south-kora-teen-suicide-rates-footage-shows-high-school-girl-in-elevator-just-before-jump-from-build.html

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[Chimera]

Elite South Korean University Rattled by suicides

 

DAEJEON, South Korea — It has been a sad and gruesome semester at South Korea’s most prestigious university, and with final exams beginning Monday the school is still reeling from the recent suicides of four students and a popular professor.

 

Academic pressures can be ferocious at the university, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, known as Kaist, and anxious school psychologists have expanded their counseling services since the suicides. The school president also rescinded a controversial policy that humiliated many students by charging them extra tuition if their grades dipped.

 

After the last of the student deaths, on April 7, the Kaist student council issued an impassioned statement that said “a purple gust of wind” had blown through campus.

 

“Day after day we are cornered into an unrelenting competition that smothers and suffocates us,” the council said. “We couldn’t even spare 30 minutes for our troubled classmates because of all our homework.

 

“We no longer have the ability to laugh freely.”

 

Young people in South Korea are a chronically unhappy group. A recent survey found them to be — for the third year in a row — the unhappiest subset among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Education Ministry in Seoul said 146 students committed suicide last year, including 53 in junior high and 3 in elementary school.

 

Psychologists at the university said very few students had sought counseling in recent days because of the time crunch brought on by finals. Ironically, during this period of maximum stress, therapists were handling only a handful of cases, mostly for anxiety.

 

“Remember that the students here are still very young and they haven’t had much experience with unpredictable situations,” said Kim Mi-hee, a staff psychologist at the campus counseling center, who estimated that about 10 percent of Kaist students had come to the center for help. “To deal with problems they tend to lock into rumination mode.

 

“But they’re so smart and so bright, they actually cope with stress pretty well. They have great capabilities of insight, so once they do get treatment, it can go pretty fast.”

 

But there is still no full-time psychiatrist on call, and Kaist professors receive no training on how to spot overstressed or depressed students. Even the entryway to the counseling suite can feel somewhat less than welcoming. Recent visitors found the front door partially blocked by a dead tree in a broken ceramic planter.

 

South Korea as a whole ranks first among O.E.C.D. nations in suicide and is routinely among the leaders in developed nations. Subway stations in Seoul have barriers to prevent people from jumping in front of arriving trains, and eight bridges in the capital have installed closed-circuit suicide-watch cameras.

 

Suicides of singers, models, beloved actors, athletes, millionaire heiresses and other prominent figures have become almost routine in South Korea. A former president, Roh Moo-hyun, threw himself off a cliff in 2009 after losing face with his countrymen.

 

But the suicides of the four Kaist undergraduates — three jumped to their deaths and a 19-year-old freshman overdosed on pills — have stunned the nation in a profound and poignant way. (The professor, a biologist who was reportedly being audited for the misuse of research funds, hanged himself on April 10.)

 

The competition for a place in a leading university begins in middle school for most South Korean students. More than 80 percent of Korean young people go to college, and parents here spend more money per child on extra classes and outside tutoring — including military-style “cram schools” — than any other country in the O.E.C.D.

 

The pressure builds to a single day in November, when a national college entrance exam is held. Some mothers pray at churches or temples throughout the day as their children take the test, which is given only once a year and lasts nine hours. The South Korean Air Force even adjusts its flight schedule so as not to disturb the test takers.

 

The ultimate goal for most students is acceptance at one of the so-called SKY schools — Seoul National, Korea or Yonsei universities. In South Korea’s status-conscious society, a degree from a SKY school is nearly a guarantee of a big career and lifelong prosperity. Pedigree is everything.

 

But Kaist is different. The university pays no regard to the national exam and instead recruits almost all of its students from among the elite seniors at special science-oriented high schools. Kaist admits only about 1,000 freshmen each year. A personal interview, high school grades and recommendations from principals count the most.

 

Kaist students are academically gifted, to be sure, but they are also seen as the future leaders of Korea’s vaunted technology-driven economy. In a sense, once they gain entrance to Kaist, the students become national treasures. As a result, many feel a huge (and sometimes crushing) burden to live up to the country’s expectations. The statement by the Kaist student leaders even referred to Kaist students as “the future luminaries of Korea’s sciences.”

 

The pressures can become too much for some students, especially those who have always been academic superstars but suddenly find themselves struggling to excel against much stiffer competition. “They’ve always been No. 1 in high school, but once they get to Kaist maybe they’re No. 40, or No. 400, and they realize they can’t possibly keep up,” said Oh Kyung-ja, a Harvard-trained professor of clinical psychology at Yonsei University. “The competition can be cruel.”

 

Suh Nam-pyo, a renowned mechanical engineer who taught for many years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became president of Kaist in 2006. He soon instituted a series of changes aimed at modeling Kaist after M.I.T. and other world-class science and research universities.

 

He mandated, for example, that all courses would be taught in English. That move led to campus-wide consternation because not all students and faculty members were fully fluent in English.

 

Mr. Suh also engineered a system that required students to pay extra tuition for each hundredth of a point that their grade point average fell below 3.0 (based on a 4.3-point system). All students pay a token fee each semester, Kaist administrators said, but otherwise their tuition is free, financed by government scholarships.

 

Under the so-called punitive tuition program, a bad semester could cost a student’s family thousands of dollars.

 

The program, which was applauded at first, has since led to deep humiliation and anxiety among many students. Those who struggled and lost their full rides suddenly saw themselves as losers. Some critics, calling it ruthless, even blamed the program for the recent suicides.

 

Mr. Suh, faced with withering criticism, recently ended most parts of the tuition plan, and the school announced that some courses would now be taught in English and Korean.

 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/world/asia/23southkorea.html?pagewanted=all

[Faarax-Brawn]

Jaahilnimo. They need islam- alow soo hanuuni