FROM their nondescript sixth-floor office, Kim Hee-joo and five other social workers trawl the internet, searching for people using the web to form suicide pacts.
"There are so many of them," said Mr Kim, secretary-general of the Korea Association for Suicide Prevention, a private counselling These have nearly doubled, from 6440 in 2000 to 12,047 in 2005.
themselves in a one-room apartment south of Seoul, then heated charcoal on a stove.
They died of carbon monoxide poisoning from the fumes.
In another, five young men and women planning a pact over the internet drove to a seaside motel to discuss methods. One member of police.
rate stood at 18.7 per 100,000 people in 2002 up from 10.2 in 1985.
Japan's rate in 2002 was the same as South Korea's, while the rate in the United States was 10.2.
modernisation and the degradation of rural life, but they are also concerned that the internet is a contributing factor.
South Korea has one of the world's highest rates of broadband access and, as in Japan, the internet has become a lethally efficient means of bringing together people with suicide on their minds.
In hardly more than a generation, South Korea has transformed itself from an agrarian society into an extremely competitive, technologically advanced economy, where the pressure to succeed is intense.
Meanwhile, the traditional support base the family is under pressure: divorce rates are at a record high.
And financial crisis in the 1990s.
from June 1998 to May 2006, Kim Jung-jin, a sociologist at Korea Nazarene University, found that nearly a third involved people who had formed suicide pacts through internet chat sites.
blogs.
Also in 2005, the Korea Internet Safety Commission, a government watchdog, shut down 566 blogs, chat groups and web postings that encouraged suicide, up sharply from 93 cases a year earlier. The four months of this year.
contemplating suicide.
The site attracted several people who left The police are now searching for the blog's creator, who could face charges of aiding suicide, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison on conviction.
"People are social animals," said Jason Lee, director of the Metropolitan Mental Health Centre in Seoul. "Some apparently want a companion even when committing suicide.
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For help or information, visit beyond blue.org.au, call Suicide Helpline Victoria on 1300 651 251 or Lifeline on 131 114.
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