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| A phone and fence on the Mapo Bridge in Seoul aim to prevent suicide. The phone directly connects the caller to an expert in suicide prevention. / Korea Times photo by Suh Jae-hoon. |
By Oh Young-jin
Organizing a suicide pact will be a crime, while guidelines will discourage the producers of web cartoons or TV dramas from encouraging or glorifying suicide.
Military officers will now undergo a personality test twice a year instead of once now, and all soldiers will be required to have a suicide prevention education.
In addition, one million public servants will be trained to form a network aimed at suicide prevention.
Cabinet endorsed these and other measures on Tuesday.
Their aim is to lower suicide rates by half in the next five years.
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| A man crosses the Mapo Bridge with its suicide prevention fence. / Korea Times |
South Korea has double the average suicide rate of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries.
If the plan works, Korea's suicide rate would fall from 25.6 people per 100,000 to 17 per 100,000 by 2022.
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