End Youth Suicide in South Korea: A Manifesto

I fight for the issue of youth suicide in South Korea:

TO START saving youths from killing themselves. We have lost way too many young souls to the tragic cause called suicide, which is the most common cause of death for South Korean youths. Teenagers should be taught to fear strangers tempting them with lollipops or threatening them with guns, NOT themselves. They should be able to go to school, meet with their friends, and follow their passions without having to be afraid of what their own hands would do to them. Teenagers should be able to dream about what their future will hold without being worried that their future may not come at all.

TO START rescuing youths from being consumed away by depression. Despite having suicide as their #1 cause of death, South Korean youths are not getting help for their depression, the most common form of mental illness in the nation. Depression is okay, depression is normal. But depression must be treated, it cannot be left to consume one’s entire life, especially if that life is of someone whose future still holds so much more than what their past had so far. Every youth, let alone every soul, deserves to be treated for their depression.

TO START the conversation around mental health in South Korea. Right now, mental illness is almost forbidden in Korea’s culture in which a disease of the mind is only viewed as a sign of weak-minded. It is ironic to think about how a country with a universal health care system so accessible to every citizen still taboos mental illness, it does not make sense how a country with the highest education level still has not admitted the importance of mental health. No treatment for mental illness can begin before the conversation around mental health starts first.

TO START condemning the older generation about their responsibility. In South Korea’s collective culture, children are not expected to disobey their elders or dishonor their families. South Korean adults regard mental illness as a form of disobedience and dishonor at once, and they are pushing their youths to death by marginalizing their mental health. The toxic cultural norm of prohibiting mental illness that started by the older generation needs to stop now.