Last year the number of Seoul elementary, middle and high school students who took their own lives rose 27.5% from the previous year. The number of students who attempted suicide that same year also increased 8.2%. Compared with 2021, students who died by suicide were 1.8 times as many, and students who attempted were 3.9 times as many. In March this year the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education drew up its "2026 Plan to Promote Student Mental Health."
Only the rates of increase were released, so the actual number of people is unknown. Even so, a trend of nearly doubling over four years is hard to explain as one year's coincidence. In December last year the Ministry of Education also put out its "Measures to Improve Support for Student Mental Health," raising the matter to a government-level task.
The place to look is the table analyzing causes. The proportions of causes for Seoul student suicides in 2025 were tallied as mental health 33%, cause unknown 31%, family problems 18%, schoolwork 10%, peer relationships 4% and personal problems 4%. Mental health accounts for the largest share but does not exceed half. The remaining two thirds are scattered across areas that are hard to address inside a counseling room alone.
Family problems at 18% and schoolwork at 10% add up to 28%. Conditions in which household circumstances are shaky and a report card defines a person rarely shift through the approach of adjusting one child's frame of mind. The education office and the education field also see student suicide as something that happens when several risk factors work together. Counseling is necessary, but the conditions of daily life that counseling alone cannot reach remain behind it.
Cause unknown at 31% is not an item to pass over either. It means that for roughly one in three, no explanation was attached for why they arrived at such a choice. Either few records were left, or no one around them read the signs, or the child never spoke in the end. Either way, the fact that there was a large hole in the adults' net of detection does not change.
Meanwhile the mental health indicators for middle and high school students themselves improved slightly last year. Responses saying they feel a lot of stress in daily life went from 37.3% in 2023 and 42.3% in 2024 to 41.3% in 2025, down 1.0 percentage point. The rate of experiencing depressed feelings, sadness or despair severe enough to halt daily life for two straight weeks, also came down from 27.7% in 2024 to 25.7% in 2025. It means that while the overall indicators were improving, the number of children pushed to the furthest extreme instead increased.
The signal that the average has improved and the signal that more children are standing at the edge do not cancel each other out. While emotional education aimed at everyone works well, there is a possibility that the small number placed in crisis situations were slipping out through that net. The fact that in both indicators the figures for girls came out higher than for boys is also a reason to divide measures finely. Spreading the same program more widely and holding on to a child who has begun to waver are different in design.
The budget and program composition of the plan that began in March this year must be examined as the details come out. In addition to how many counseling staff were added, it must also be checked which ministries were joined with on factors that cross the school wall, such as difficulties at home or academic pressure. Whether the 31% that the statistics failed to capture decreases can also be checked in next year's tally.
For one homeroom teacher to read the faces of thirty students every day is not realistically possible. So noticing the child who grew a little quieter last month, the child who has started sitting alone in the cafeteria, still leans heavily on the eyes of the friend in the next seat and of parents. Until the counseling room's phone number posted at the back of the classroom is actually dialed, what fills that gap is someone's single remark more than a system. If there is one more adult who asks a child today, "How are you doing lately," one line of next year's statistics could be different.
