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Spatial Distribution of Suicide in South Korea: County Differentials of Age, Gender Specific Suicide Rates In ೺Spatial distribution of Suicide in South Korea: County differentials of age, gender specific suicide rates in 2005 & 2010೻ 1. Introduction Recently, suicide is considered as one of the most prevalent causes of death in South Korea (NSO 2013). Suicide is the most frequent cause of death in 10~39 years old. Following cancer, suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death in 40~59 years old. Commonly, ‘death’ is what the most of human beings want to get away from. But suicide means some people are trying to choose death instead of life because of severe reasons disrupting their normal life. Therefore, suicide can be considered as a strong indicator of ‘abnormality’ of life. Also, it is obvious that death of suicide has huge negative impact not only for the individuals but also society. Furthermore, suicide generates bereavement impacts to their friends and family (Mishara 1995), and to community with imitative suicides (Stack 1987). Among the countries in the world, South Korea has been one of the top nations having high suicide rate. From 2003, suicide rate of South Korea started to exceed that of other countries. It was due to sharp increase of suicide rate of South after great financial crisis in 1998. In 2010, suicide rate increased about three times higher than that of 1990, in contrast to the suicide rate of Japan has been stabilized from 1998, relatively. Overall suicide rate of OECD countries has been decreased yearly (OECD 2013), as stated in <Figure 1>. 40.00 35.00 30.00 25.00 20.00 15.00 10.00 Suicide per 100,000 5.00 0.00 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 Korea Japan OECD 1 < Figure 1: Trends of suicide rate of South Korea, Japan and average of OECD countries> Diverged suicide rate within country can be considered as severe issue in South Korea. In 1992, gaps among age group specific suicide rate were almost similar. Although there were steep increase in 1998, uprising trend was occurred in all of the age groups and stared to decrease soon. However, after the beginning of the 21st century, elderly suicide rate increased so sharply than younger age groups. The gap among suicide rate became more divergent until 2005. After then, highly increased elderly suicide rate was relented. But the gaps between elder and younger age groups is still lager than others. Also, according to the mortality data, the highest suicide rate by county (administrative units, similar to counties in the U.S.) was about 7.1 times higher than the lowest one in 2010. What is worse, elderly suicide rate shows more severely differentiated gap. The highest suicide rate by administrative units was about 14.2 times higher than the lowest one. It indicates that huge gap between regions really exist in South Korea. Some regions show more severe mortality, especially in suicide rate. We can expect that some risk factors exacerbate inequalities of mortality and morbidity in South Korea (Kang 2013, Wilkinson 1997). 140 120 age 0 - 9 age 10 - 19 100 age 20 - 29 80 age 30 - 39 60 age 40 - 49 40 age 50 - 59 age 60 - 69 20 age 70 - 79 0 age 80+ 2010 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 2009 1992 2 < Figure 2: Pattern of Suicide rate by Age groups 1992-2010>1 Despite of sharply increased suicide rate in overall age groups, researches about suicide rate of various subgroups (age, gender, class and so on) were no conducted frequently. A large proportion of researches about suicide in South Korea usually focused on suicidal ideation and other psychological factors based on small survey (Choi, Kim and Suh 2009, 2011, Kwon, Um and Kim-Yu-Jin 2012, Lee and Lee 2009, Lee and Ha 2011, Yook et al. 2011). Partly, lack of studies about suicide caused by several limitations of data about suicide because it is hard to be collected by researchers (Park 2010) and unstable official records (Pescosolido and Mendelsohn 1986) . Even though some scholars tried to invest suicide rate as the unit of analysis, they just roughly utilized province level (similar to state level data in the U.S.) or overall suicide rate using only single year, despite this country is suffering from steep increase in completed suicide, diverged by age (Choi 2011, JeoungHee 2011, Kim and Kwon 2013, Kim and Kim 2011, Kim 2010, Shin 2007, Song et al. 2013). As a matter of fact, social factors do affect individual’s life, both positively and negatively. But social pressures don’t be applied to everyone in different social groups (Bruce et al. 2012, Pescosolido and Mendelsohn 1986, Ryu 2008, Wilkinson 1997). Therefore, my main research questions in this study are like following ones: What kinds of social influential factors to differentials of suicide rate by age group, gender, class? Can these differentials of suicide rate contribute overall understanding to severe social disorder in current South Korea? 2. Literature Review Without a doubt, the most famous and powerful sociological study of suicide is Durkheim's Suicide: A Study of Sociology. Durkheim argued that suicide rate is a social fact and it should be included in the research area of sociology. Overall, the lack of social integration leads risk of committing suicide because 1 “oue : Motality “tatistis Natioal Offie of “tatistis of Koea, 3 of losing social regulation leads to anomic status which is pervasive in modern society (Durkheim 1951). Although individuals choose to commit suicide with their decision, Durkheim considered suicide as a social phenomenon because suicide happens when society is not integrated to a proper degree. In other words, suicide should be understood as a social fact because it happens when society does not work well. Durkheim’s perspective became basic theory for investigating suicide in Sociology (Wu 2010). Although many sociologists have tried to overcome Durkheim's study, they were considered as just adding virtually nothing of significance to Durkheim's theory (Evans and Farberow 2003). A number of studies about suicide still follow Durkheim’s perspective about social integration and related influential factors. But it is hard to deny that Durkheim is the most important scholar in the field of suicide studies. Although various studies on suicide has utilized different methods (qualitative or quantitative), suicide rate was considered to be affected by social isolation, aging, family security, human capital, living condition. Social Isolation and Aging One of the core of Durkheim’s theory of suicide, less social integration treated as negative factor of sociology. Sainsbury (1955) argued that high mobility of residences (moving in and out in the area) and increased anonymous raise suicide rate of the area because of increased social isolation. In conventional society, there were lesser move in and out without historical, natural events. However, in current urban areas, there are high magnitude of mobility which is associated with lesser bonds with residences. Therefore, Marris (1969) argued that the center of urban area has low cohesion and social network than suburban areas that decrease the regulation with lesser social relationship contacts. In their perspective, relatively low population density is positively associated with higher suicide rate due to level of isolation. Currently, ‘Aging’ is becoming more and more important issue in South Korea. 11% of total population is consisted with old population over 65 years old, which means South Korea is still in ‘Aging Society’. However, the aging population is growing so fast, with world widely low fertility rate. If the aging population grows so fast, South Korea will be the member of ‘aged country’ in the world in 2018 (Kim and 4 Kim 2011). It is the fastest transition from ‘Aging society’ to ‘Aged society’ in the world because it only took 18 years to be have doubled old population. Furthermore, the transition from ‘Aged Society’ to ‘Post- Aged Society’ is projected to take only 8 years, which is also the rapidest speed in the world. Therefore, rapid aging will be severe social phenomena in the foreseeable future because it is hard mission to prepare impacts of growing aged population in just short time (Bae and Park 2006) Although South Korea is facing to have larger proportion of aged people, current social welfare system for the elderly in Korea cannot be considered as well organized one. According to the OECD welfare expenditure statistics, South Korea has one of the lowest percentage of welfare expenditure compared to GDP (OECD 2013) . Due to expanded life expectancy of population in South Korea, the elderly usually live longer than before. The average of life expectancy in 2012 is 80 (Finance 2013) . However, the mandatory retirement age is 58~60, which means people should survive without formal earnings about 20 years. Since South Korea is close to slack market, usually supply of workers is much higher than demand of workers, re-entering regular occupation are is not easy mission for the elderly. Also, social expenditure related to the elderly such as health insurance system and long-term care was largely increased. However, combined with changing family system from extended to nuclear one, care for the elderly by family has been decreasing in fast speed, hurting elderly’s stability of life (Choe and Jang 2009). Family Security Suicide rate can be accelerated by dramatic social change (Matt, Cynthia and Bernice 2011). How such changes made some groups more vulnerable than others to self-destruction? Divorce and bereavement also can be considered as risk factors on family security. In South Korea, worsened family insecurity harmfully affect risk of suicide (Kang 2013, Ryu 2008). Crude divorce rate in rural area was the most harmful factor on elderly Suicide.
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