[Photo Credit to Pixabay]

Within 5 days, three teenagers took their own lives by doing a death leap, throwing themselves into the streets from a high building in Gangnam. 

One of the cases was on April 16th; a teenage girl in Korea committed suicide by falling off from a building in Gangnam at 2:30 P.M.

This act was live on instagram, and many people were able to see this tragedy online. 

The girl revealed the plan through live broadcast, and broadcasted the whole entire process until jumping off. 

It was shown that she was planning to do accompanied suicide with somebody else that she got to knew in a suicide club (website), but that man did not end up showing up. 

Like this, there are a lot of cases these days where people attempt or actually commit suicide. 

According to statistics released by the National Statistical Office, the number of suicide deaths in 2021 was 13,352, an increase of 1.2% from 2020.

The suicide rate per 100,000 population was 26.0, up 1.2% from last year. 

According to a clinic centre, there are several reasons for these suicides, such as depression or feeling agitation, breaking up with  loved ones, financial problems, etc. 

The girl in the case introduced above has planned this in a depression gallery, where people share their negative emotions or talk about themselves. 

According to a professor in the field of criminal psychology, she said that “the girl’s emotions were very unstable, and on the other hand , it's not just complaining of anxiety, but I can see a smile as if it's very uplifting.”

Also, she told the public that when a youngster explains their depression or mental illnesses onto the site, people who are on there give them a zolpidem, which contains a narcotic component, faking them as antidepressants. 

As students would not know them, they would intake the drug to their body. 

Through these ways, adults would commit crime against the naive teenagers, manipulating student’s innocence and naiveness. 

This case further highlighted the catastrophic consequences and dangers of the depression gallery and suicide clubs. 

Currently, the website is closed and is unable to look into the contents of it as the request of many citizens, who are aware of the dangers that it could have. 

Along with these suicidal cases, there was another case where a famous male idol, MoonBin committing suicide on April 19th, 2023. 

Although the reason for the cause of this case of suicide was not told stated, it is for sure that most of the younger students who have faster access to the internet and these kind of information, have contacted or seen the four suicidal cases within 5 days. 

Although only 20 people were actually looking at the girl who went live to broadcast her death, many people saw her video as people screen recorded or downloaded it, spreading it to other people. 

Due to this phenomenon, the police took 5 days to get rid of this video from everyone. 

Professionals worry that the werther effect, known as emulating of suicide for another person, would go viral within younger students.

In fact, a team of Kim Nam-guk, a professor of convergence medicine at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, conducted a survey based on 15 celebrities who made extreme choices from the 1990s to 2010, and found that the number of copycat suicides increased significantly.