The South Korean police are investigating a spate of Web-assisted suicides which has raised disturbing questions about the Internet in one of the most wired countries in the world.
On Monday they arrested a man of 26 for his alleged part in a double suicide at a motel in Kangnung, on the east coast.
The suspect, named only as Kim, is reported to have met the two victims through a Web site which offers advice on how to commit suicide. The police say he may have provided the poison they used.
Detectives said the man also used the Internet to take out a contract on himself and a suicidal woman friend. Their would-be killer, named Yoon, was unable to fulfil the contract because he was arrested on Friday for a separate and "successful" contract suicide arranged over the Net.
For about US$823.20, it is alleged, Yoon stabbed his victim in the stomach in a Seoul station car park on Dec. 12. He told the police that he thought he was helping the victim.
The revelation that people are using the Internet to help themselves -- and others -- to commit suicide has shocked many in South Korea, where about one in three people in a population of 47 million are online.
Local reports say there are about 30 South Korean Web sites on suicide. The one used by Kim and Yoon, which contains adverts for "suicide partners," is reported to have had more than 50,000 hits.
"It's unclear whether the operation of such sites is illegal," a prosecution official said. "So we're examining related laws and scrutinizing suicide sites, as well as collecting information on similar cases overseas."
Similar sites have been operating in Japan for some time. In October last year a man and a woman killed themselves after making a suicide pact over the Web. The previous year the operator of a Web site selling cyanide killed himself after the police questioned him about a customer's suicide.
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