The Role and Future Tasks of the National Assembly Suicide Prevention Forum - Focusing on the Legislative Content of Suicide Prevention Laws

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11298267/

What this article is about: A 2024 paper published in Psychiatry Investigation examining the history, accomplishments, and future direction of South Korea’s National Assembly Suicide Prevention Forum — a group of lawmakers dedicated to advancing suicide prevention through legislation and budget allocation.

The scale of the problem: In 2022, there were 12,906 suicides in South Korea — 4.7 times the number of traffic accident deaths that same year. From 2020 to 2022, suicide deaths totaled 39,453, exceeding the approximately 35,000 COVID-19 deaths during the same period. Suicide is the fifth leading cause of death overall, and the leading cause of death for people in their teens, twenties, and thirties. The rate climbs sharply with age, reaching 60.6 per 100,000 among those aged 80 and above. Roughly 90,000 people are added to the bereaved family high-risk group each year, and the annual socioeconomic loss from suicide is estimated at 5.4 trillion Korean won.

Three turning points in South Korea’s suicide prevention history: The article identifies three key milestones. The first was the establishment of the Korea Association for Suicide Prevention in 2003–2004, a private nonprofit bringing together experts from medicine, media, law, and local communities. The second was the passage of the Suicide Prevention Act in 2011, which formally acknowledged suicide as a serious social harm and established the national duty to prevent it. The third was the creation of the National Assembly Suicide Prevention Forum in 2018, formed by 39 lawmakers, which the article describes as completing a prevention network by adding legislative and parliamentary power to what civil society and government had already built.

What the Forum has done: Since 2018, the Forum has held 23 policy seminars covering causes of suicide (13%), policy directions (17%), target groups such as workers and adolescents (22%), budget (9%), organizational structure (9%), and other topics (30%). It has also held six international seminars, bringing in experts from the WHO, Australia, Denmark, and the United States to share practices from countries that had already reduced their suicide rates. The Korean Neuropsychiatric Association played a central role, chairing 11 of the 23 seminars and presenting at 13. Following the first seminar, the Ministry of Health and Welfare began releasing provisional monthly suicide statistics starting in 2020 — something that had not been done before. Budget increases were also directly tied to Forum activities: the suicide prevention budget rose from 7.3 billion won in 2017 to 13.6 billion won in 2018, and continued climbing to 48.9 billion won by 2023 — a 6.7-fold increase. The article notes, however, that this still amounts to roughly 1/20th of Japan’s suicide prevention budget of 830 billion won.

Legislative achievements: In its first term (2018–2020), the Forum proposed 17 bills, four of which passed. Key outcomes included establishing the Suicide Prevention Policy Committee under the Prime Minister’s Office, requiring suicide reporting guidelines to be included in the national five-year plan, enabling information sharing between police, fire departments, and suicide prevention centers, allowing emergency services to request location data for individuals at suicide risk, prohibiting the distribution of suicide-inducing information, and adding bereaved family support to the responsibilities of suicide prevention centers. In its second term (2020–2024), 14 bills were proposed and three passed. These included allowing suicide prevention centers to obtain personal information on suicide attempters without their consent — shifting from a passive to a proactive approach — formalizing the legal foundation of the Korea Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and mandating suicide prevention education across national agencies, schools, workplaces with 30 or more employees, and senior welfare facilities, effective July 12, 2024.

What still needs to happen: The article argues that legislation alone cannot prevent suicide and that the Suicide Prevention Act by itself is insufficient. It calls for a broader review of other laws that affect suicide risk, the creation of a dedicated Suicide Prevention Fund for stable long-term funding, and a continued shift toward addressing the underlying social and economic conditions that drive people toward suicide rather than focusing only on individual mental health responses.