Suicide+JS

**__Suicide in East Asia__**

Jane (Youn-Jeong) Song Asian Studies 10D  11 June Saturday **What accounts for the exceptionally high rates of suicide in the three East Asia countries: the Republic of Korea, Japan and China?**

**Introduction: ** The three East Asian countries: the Republic of Korea, China and Japan have grown exponentially over the past few decades. However, their swift gain to financial power and prosperity has lead to substantial rates of suicide compared to those who have gained economic prosperity more steadily (i.e: Singapore). China reports a whopping rate of 23.1 % (27.1 million) of their population, Korea, the first in all 30 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) reports a staggering 28.1% (13.43 million) rate, and Japan, 23.8% (30.5 million), (Shah A.) Reading about the domino effect suicides at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) has surely piqued my interest in the socio-economic factors, cultural and religious factors that contribute to suicide. The [|article] in particular identified peer-pressure, grades, failures to meet the expectation of one's parents and financial problems as the main causes for the deaths of the students. Looking back on our society, I realize that I have encountered many accounts of suicides over the years -mostly by grades and education - on the news. It strikes me as odd that Korea, a highly developed nation, has lost so many talented and bright young minds over the decades from the belief that they haven't been able to achieve their best and impress their peers. In a world where one's education, salary and job is regarded as the highest point of accomplishment in one's life, it doesn't come as a surprise that this leads to incredible degrees of stress and emotional instability. Interestingly, after referring to multiple research papers, I have identified suicidal factors that are most prevalent in East Asia: grades/education, peer pressure, unemployment and financial insecurity. Combining my concern for this issue and the research project aimed at the three contemporary societies : the Republic of Korea, China and Japan, I have captured the factors that lead to the high rates of suicide in East Asia through a research paper and a video, shown below.

**Research Paper**  **Color code:** ** China ** ** Japan ** **Korea**

**<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Video ** media type="youtube" key="LDHM4hLGPYE" height="349" width="560" <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Sorry! forgot to add credits to the video So here goes my thanks to Minae, Chris, Christina, Seungah, Namkyu and Mr.Joo for participating in my project :)

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The video attempts to capture a view of socio-economic and cultural factors that contribute to the high rate of suicide in East Asia.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Self-Evaluation**

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**1. What did you contribute specifically to your project?** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">I invested a lot of time and effort to this project. Since May I have been reading about this issue and my project is a final compilation of what I have learnt.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**2. How successful do you think you conveyed your research to your audience?** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">In order to successfully deliver what I learnt, I tried to put things into perspective as much as I could. I specifically filmed students and a teacher for my video for the audience to relate to the issue as much as possible. After all, a handful of the suicides are by high school and college students. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Additionally, for my research report, I included a result of a poll with information that I gathered from 30 students.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**3. What would have made your presentation more successful?** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">My presentation would have been more successful by featuring real account of suicide articles or videos. However, I didn't want to go into the details - for myself and for others. I'm not really interested in methods or ways that people commit suicide, but rather, cultural and socio-economic factors that induce suicidal behavior. Hence, I eliminated all details regarding the former in my paper. There are plenty of information out there for those who are interested, but I really didn't want to include it in my presentation, and I didn't think it was school-appropriate.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**4. How successful do you think your technology-based materials were in conveying your research?** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Through what I gathered from my research, I created a research report and a video featuring my classmates. The research report is very detailed and is insightful towards the major factors that influence people to commit suicide. The latter is more of a general overview that outlines the key points to my paper. I tried to make the film as spooky as possible. :)

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**5. What would have made your technology-based materials more successful?** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">My video would have been better with refinement and better editing. Yes, I'm no Imovie expert and it took me a while to even get the basics down. The next time I edit an imovie project, I will focus on having smoother transitions from each video clip and planning beforehand. For this project, I planned my video as I was filming and editing so some of the scenes might be a bit confusing for the audience.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**6. What did you learn from this project? Submit any other comments after this question.** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">I have definitely learnt a lot from this project. I came across the issue of suicide in East Asia (specifically in South Korea) when I was finding a news article to present to the class for my Asian Studies Current Event Project. Since reading the article, it has continuously captured my utmost interest for the issue. Living in this country fueled by competition, I was always under the belief that suicide rates in Korea would be high among other nations, but I didn't stop to think that it might be the highest in the world. The data completely shocked me and I was determined to learn more about suicide culture in the countries around us. Researching for this project, I admit, was a bit spooky. Although suicide isn't a "fun" topic to learn and study about, I was fully engaged all the while I was reading the articles and papers. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Through my project, I've learnt that suicide rates in East Asia is highest in Korea, followed by Japan and China. However, this is misleading because even though China has a lower suicide rate than Korea or Japan, there are more people who commit suicide in China because of their large population, incomparable to that of the two countries. The single most interesting aspect to my issue was the cultural factors, especially in Japan, that induce people to commit suicide. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">After I completed the project, I gave myself a moment to put things into perspective and imagining myself in their shoes. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">I've searched for ways to prevent suicide and I do see that there are many organizations and governmental efforts, however, many of their efforts seem to conclude to no avail. Many of these actions are easier said than done and many are geared towards a population level and not on an individual basis. Also because many cultural factors are part of the reasons for the suicides in Japan, it seems that what the government says won't have a big impact as an individual. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Because the vast majority of the students in Korea commit suicide for peer pressure and grades, I continue to ponder on possibilities that might exist that will both reduce the suicides while still maintaining the cultural and educational aspect to Korea.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Works cited** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> 1.Shah A. The relationship between suicide rate and age: an analysis of multinational data from the World Health Organisation. Int Psychogeriatr. 2007 Dec.

<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2. Mello-Santos C, Bertolote J, Wang YP. Characterisation of age and gender rates of suicide. Rev Bras. 2005 Jun.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> 3. Shah AK. Are age-related trends in suicide rates associated with life expectancy and socio-economic factors? Int J Psychiatry Clin Prac. 2009.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> 4. ShahA, Padayatchi M, Das K. The relationship between elderly suicide rates and elderly dependency ratios: a cross-national study using data from the WHO data bank. Int Psychogeriatr. 2008 Jun.

<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">5."China Suicide Rate Is 2.3 times the Global Average." //Association for Asia Research//. 18 Nov. 2003. Web. 10 June 2011.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">6. "Seppuku." //Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia//. Web. 11 June 2011.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">7. Collings SCD. Suicide Trends and Social Factors. Mortality Study. Wellington: University of Otago.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">8. Analects, trans. D.C. Lau, second edition, (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1992)

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">9. May, Nick. "Editor's Picks: Seppuku - Practical Guide." //Fukuoka : An Expats' Guide//. Web. 12 June 2011.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">10. "Apple Confirms Death of IPhone Worker in China | Apple - CNET News." //Technology News - CNET News//. Web. 12 June 2011.

<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**images:**

<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1. //Death//. Digital image. //Flickr//. Web. 11 June 2011. <span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2. //Man in Poverty//. Digital image. //Egloos//. Web. 11 June 2011. <span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">3. //Scared Child at Night Time//. Digital image. //Wikipedia//. Web. 11 June 2011. <span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">4. //Smiley Faces//. Digital image. //Creative Commons//. Web. 11 June 2011.