South Korea faces tough challenges with mental health and family growth, as fresh government data shows suicides holding steady at high levels while births finally tick up after years of decline.
In the first six months of 2024, 7,067 people in South Korea died by suicide, according to Statistics Korea. That’s a small drop from the 7,844 cases in the same period of 2023, but it remains alarmingly close to the 7,142 seen in early 2022. The numbers highlight ongoing struggles in a country that leads the world in suicide rates among developed nations.
Breaking it down by age, adults in their 50s made up the biggest group at 22.4% of cases. Close behind were those in their 40s (19%), 60s (15.1%), 30s (13.5%), and 70s (9.8%), with younger and older groups filling out the rest. Experts stress that suicide isn’t just a personal crisis—it’s a sign of deeper social and economic pressures that demand action from everyone.
Choi Min-jae, a researcher at Korea University’s Graduate School of Public Health, shared his thoughts in a recent piece for the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. He calls for the government to expand beyond help for at-risk groups and roll out “selective and universal” programs that tackle suicide risks for the whole population. Choi also pushes for a central hub to review how policies on budgets, jobs, and more influence suicide rates, then add safeguards where dangers pop up.
South Korea’s suicide rate sits at 26.2 per 100,000 people in 2024—the highest in the OECD, more than double the group’s average of 10.8. These stats underscore the urgent need for better public health strategies to bring numbers down.
Shifting to brighter news on the population front, South Korea saw a welcome baby boomlet in July. Births jumped 5.9% to 21,803 newborns, up from 20,580 the year before, fueled by more weddings amid post-pandemic recovery. This continues a streak of 13 straight months of year-over-year gains, though July’s total ranks as the fourth-lowest for the month since records started in 1981.
From January through July, 147,804 babies arrived—a 7.2% rise from last year and the strongest growth in over four decades. It’s the first such increase for the period since 2015, offering a glimmer of hope in a nation grappling with one of the world’s lowest fertility rates. That rate climbed slightly to 0.8 children per woman in July, an uptick of 0.04 from 2023.
While the birth upswing is encouraging, experts watch closely as South Korea works to reverse long-term demographic declines through incentives like family support and housing aid. These trends in South Korea suicide rates and birth rates paint a picture of a society pushing for balance amid rapid changes.
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