In Korean Celebrity Suicides, the Spotlight Shines on the Country's Institutionalized Tragedy
When we think of the star power of South Korea, we think of a country that has largely benefited from the globalization of its celebrity product. The country has produced top-tier singers, dancers, actors, and other entertainers that can compete with the best of them. Artists like BTS and Blackpink, and actors like Kim Soon Hyun and Lee Min-ho, have achieved worldwide recognition while shows like Squid Game and Crash Landing on You, as well as movies like Parasite and The Handmaiden, have crossed over to the Western mainstream. All have garnered considerable acclaim outside of the country's borders.
For a nation now known for the dynamism of K-Pop and the glamor of K-Dramas and the like, its darker side, however, still rears its ugly head. The apparent suicide of K-pop star Moonbin again reminds us of South Korea's failure to address one of its most pressing concerns. The country continues to struggle with suicide and suicidal ideation among young people. And it's difficult to see how circumstances can improve from here.
On April 19, Moonbin was found dead at his home in Gangnam, Seoul. Local police reported that the star took his own life. News broke and we were all stunned. It wasn't too long ago that we heard of the demise of another Korean entertainment personality, actress Yoo Ju-eun, who reportedly also suffered the same fate in 2020. Before this, the world was shocked by the passing of SHINee singer Jonghyu, who also reportedly died by suicide.
Jonghyun, gone too soon.
If we go back further, in 2009 alone, there were three high-profile suicides reported by South Korean media: actress Jang Ja-yeon (29), President Roh Moo-hyun (45), and supermodel Daul Kim (20). "The Nation's Actress" Choi Jin-sil also took her own life a year earlier. The list goes on, each as tragic as the last.
These unfortunate deaths don't just cover the South Korean entertainment business, as pointed out by local correspondent Kim Dae-o, who, in a piece in The Guardian in 2020, detailed the experience of having to cover 30 suicides over 30 years as a journalist in the industry.
He wrote in his column:
"I can say with absolute certainty that this is a problem for everyone in South Korean society. The statistics speak for themselves. More South Koreans kill themselves than people in other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The figures for 2019 have yet to be published, but everyone predicts South Korea will come on top yet again."
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In 2019, the World Bank reported that South Korea possesses the fourth-highest suicide mortality rate in the world, behind only Lesotho, Guyana, and Eswatini. This troubling trend continues in 2023. The Korean Statistical Information Service puts the suicide rate in South Korea at 26 per 100,000 population, based on figures from 2021. OECD numbers confirm pretty much the same thing. It pegs the suicide rate in the country at 24.1 per 100 population.
Moonbin was slated to perform at the Dream Concert in Busan with Sanha.
Of course, we can't sit and pretend to know each case's motivation for their actions, as Kim Dae-o sensibly concluded. But we may find some clues from the country's harrowing statistics.
The three main causes of suicide in Korea are said to be mental health, economic, and health problems, according to the Korean National Police Agency. Some may argue that this is brought on by the country's modern-day economic development. Young people are particularly susceptible.
The Korean entertainment industry spotlight is a different kind of beast for younger entertainers. Top officials of the local entertainment scene themselves tend to reduce these stars into plastic commodities under powerful agencies that control nearly every aspect of the performers' lives. From salacious details strategically released to the public to overworking the talents to the point of exhaustion, the situation can be egregious for even the biggest stars. There is no letup in the global and local media cycle.
It also doesn't help that the South Korean government, stans, trolls, and more have all played a part in this institutionalized tragedy. For instance, the Korean Association of Journalists’ guidelines make it a point to not reveal how people take their own lives. Reporters, too, fall for the trap of reporting on these deaths in a more scandalized way for the sake of page views.
Former KARA member Goo Hara reportedly committed suicide after being cyberbullied.
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It's not just stars. The constant and endless competition plagues many of the young people in this country, almost as if they were born to be crippled by the pressure. Nearly every Korean child gets into an educational battle from the very start of their preschool years. South Korea's National Youth Policy Institute also points out that the academic burden can lead to fatigue and suicidal ideation. Korea, too is the leading country in the world for producing unhappy schoolchildren.
From 2016 to 2021, 20-year-olds who experienced depression doubled in the country. Data from 2021 also suggests that nearly 30 percent of South Koreans suffer from mental health disorders. However, only 15.3 percent seek treatment. The South Korean writer Se-Woong Koo calls the situation in the nation "Hell Joseon," which quite frankly entails that the only escape from this "infernal kingdom," as he put it, is either by immigration or death.
In Korea Expose, he wrote:
"It seems that more and more South Koreans in their 20s and 30s are calling this gap between the two realities proof of South Korea as “Hell Joseon” — an infernal feudal kingdom stuck in the nineteenth century — and this language is catching on, to much hand-wringing in the domestic media. There is even a website dedicated to exposing South Korea’s ostensibly hellish and backward reality — named Hell Korea — and each morning I find the Hell Joseon Facebook group with more likes than the previous night.
"...The Hell Joseon discourse embodies despair and hopelessness of the most extreme variety, the idea that the South Korean state cannot be redeemed through effort. In fact, “effort” — noryeok in Korean — is one of the most hated words in the Hell Joseon lexicon, seen as part of an insidious tactic of the ruling class to trick the population into continuing to believe that work is meaningful, mobility possible, and justice alive."
He writes further:
"If we are to go by this depressing assessment of South Korea, what angers the young are obvious: having to sacrifice youth for interminable education, the state and a job one does not believe in; a narrow path to financial security and an even more narrowly defined path to success; growing inequality and hereditary privileges of the haves; lack of social welfare that might cushion the fall to poverty; and elite corruption."
There continues to be a certain disillusionment among the youth in Korea about the country's hypercompetitive state. From its children to its biggest stars and Presidents, Koreans in general seem to struggle with the country's newfound economic pedigree. More work, but not exactly prosperity for all. Hell, even South Korea's elderly population has a high prevalence of suicide due to widespread poverty among seniors.
Last week, the South Korean government said that it would implement mental health checkups for citizens aged 20 to 70 once every two years to mitigate the suicide rate, as per the Korea Times. It plans on lowering the suicide rate from 24.1 per 100,000 people in 2021 to 18.2 per 100,000 people by 2027.
The country still has a long way to go. Cases like Moonbin serve as yet another cautionary tale for young people in this economic and entertainment powerhouse of a country. Sadly, the tragedy of suicide in South Korea will always lie in the inevitable next.
