The government said on the 9th it will cut the youth suicide rate to half in 10 years. To that end, it will deploy professional counseling staff to every school and expand youth-only psychiatric wards and beds. It also said it will build a system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect suicide warning signs. Teachers' groups criticized the move as "a measure that sidesteps the essence of the problem while leaving intact the educational reality that drives youths into extreme competition."
On the day, 15 ministries and agencies, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, and the Korean National Police Agency, announced a pan-government plan to prevent suicide among teenagers. According to the Ministry of Data and Statistics (MODS), 396 teenagers died by suicide last year, up 6.5% from a year earlier, the highest on record. The youth suicide rate per 100,000 people is eight as of 2024. The government set a goal of reducing the rate to 6.5 in 2030 and 4.2 in 2035.
The government unveiled 15 tasks for a five-step strategy: prevention, detection, intervention, recovery, and foundation building. To prevent suicide, it said it will expand mental health education for youths. It will increase current social-emotional education in elementary, middle, and high schools from six cross-curricular class hours to 17. It will also expand experiential and activity-centered physical education and arts education.
In addition, it will revise the suicide prevention law so that provincial and metropolitan offices of education can also receive information from police and fire authorities on suicide attempters. Under current law, information is shared only with the Suicide Prevention Center and community mental health centers. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family will also build, by year-end, a system that uses AI to detect crisis warning signs.
The government will deploy professional counseling staff to every school. It will also push to introduce dedicated wards and beds to support counseling and treatment for youths in crisis. It said it will gradually increase the budget that supports student mental health from the current 0.25% of the aggregates of ordinary local education grants to 1% by 2030.
Teachers' organizations questioned the effectiveness of the plan. The Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations (KFTA) said in a press release, "It is regrettable that there is a lack of consideration and measures on why students are unhappy and the fundamental causes behind the surge in students facing mental health crises."
It added, "Schools are currently in a situation where outdoor activities have been drastically curtailed due to safety incidents and various civil complaints, yet there was no consideration of this. Presenting such measures as part of suicide prevention itself shows a lack of communication with the school field."
The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU) also said in a commentary, "While saying it will reduce youth suicides, the government left intact the educational reality that drives youths into extreme competition and merely expanded measures for counseling, treatment, and managing students in crisis."
The KTU said, "This is not a problem that can be solved by adding a few more counselors and a few more programs," adding, "To truly resolve the issue of youths' extreme choices, the nation must focus its capacity on the fundamental tasks of easing entrance-exam competition, restoring school communities, and building a support system for students in emotional crisis."