A recent rash of suicides in South Korea is being blamed on the grim economic climate, news reports said this week.
Medical experts say mental illness has also been on the rise here amid the recent stock market meltdown.
Yonhap news agency said a 47-year-old man in the southwestern city of Gwangju committed suicide last Sunday after suffering heavy losses in his highly leveraged investment in stocks.
The man put a total of 370 million won (US$255,000) in stocks two years earlier after taking out a mortgage on his house and using his life insurance as collateral, Yonhap said.
But he lost two-thirds of the investment in this year’s stock market plunge.
On the same day, a couple in their 60s were prevented from committing suicide by police, the Korea Times said. They had borrowed 100 million won from a security company last October, invested it all and lost most of it.
Acting on a tip from their relatives, police found the man writing a suicide note in his car, parked on a deserted road, with a wire around his neck. His wife was rescued after she swallowed sleeping pills at home.
On Oct. 9, a 32-year-old employee from a security firm was found dead at an inn in Seoul, also in an apparent suicide linked to the plummeting stock market, the Korea Times said.
“About 20 percent of my patients complain of growing agony over the market crash. They’ve got an extra reason to get depressed,” Ha Jee-hyun, a psychiatrist at Konkuk University Hospital said.
“Those who suffer from depression tend to blame themselves for everything that went wrong. They torture themselves over the market crash, even though the crisis is a global one,” he said.
The WHO warned last week that the global economic crisis is likely to cause an increase in suicides and mental illness as people struggle to cope with losing their homes or livelihoods.
‘NO SECURITY RISK’: The Railway Bureau reassured the public that the technicians’ activities were limited to technical guidance and did not involve sensitive systems The Railway Bureau yesterday said it had invited eight Chinese technicians to assist with an airport MRT construction project. The bureau issued the confirmation after an Internet user said Chinese nationals had entered the construction zone of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s Terminal 3 project. They asked why “individuals from an enemy state” were allowed access to such a major national infrastructure project, which raised serious concerns over Taiwan’s industrial safety, sensitive systems and information security. The bureau’s Northern Region Engineering Branch Office said subcontractor Taiwan Handle Industrial Co (台灣手把工業) of the Taoyuan airport MRT’s “Contract No. CU05 Project A14 Station Civil, MEP &
The National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology yesterday showcased its locally developed variants of the Vision 60 robotic patrol dog, which it plans to deploy on the nation’s outlying territories in the South China Sea. The variants were produced under the Joint Lab project — created by the institute and domestic companies — and assembled with domestically produced motors, lenses and artificial intelligence (AI) systems alongside licensed tech from the US, Missile and Rocket Systems Research Division deputy director Jen Kuo-kang (任國光) told the media event at a military base in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area. Taiwan has built up its strengths
NOT IMMEDIATE: Taiwan has a chance to appeal the proposed 10 percent tariff before it starts, while other countries face a 12.5 percent tariff from the trade office Taiwan is among 60 economies determined by the US to have failed to impose or enforce a ban on the importation of goods produced with forced labor, according to a notice released on Tuesday by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), which proposed imposing an additional 10 percent or more tariff on them. The USTR in a statement said that following an investigation, it had determined under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 that the failure of the 60 economies to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is
TIT-FOR-TAT: The US allegedly revoked the visa of a Chinese national working at Xinhua News Agency in the US in response to Beijing’s expulsion of Vivian Wang The Presidential Office yesterday condemned China for expelling a New York Times correspondent from Beijing following the newspaper’s interview with President William Lai (賴清德), saying the move highlighted Beijing’s suppression of press freedom and its threat to international news media. Taiwan has noted a series of recent incidents in which Beijing used similar tactics to “threaten and pressure international media outlets and journalists,” Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said in a statement. “This concerns not only press freedom and freedom of expression, but also the safety of journalists, and Taiwan and relevant partners are paying close attention to the situation,” she
RSS