DistantNews
Support us
🇰🇷 South Korea /Health & Science

Audit finds South Korea failing to refer many high-risk suicide-attempt cases

From Hankyoreh · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Official statement Under investigation
  • South Korea’s Board of Audit and Inspection found that nearly half of suicide-attempt cases transferred from fire stations to emergency rooms were not referred to suicide-prevention centers.
  • It also found that 81.5% of suicide-attempt patients who went directly to emergency rooms were not referred because hospitals had no duty to share their information.
  • Only 5.7% of high-risk people referred to prevention centers agreed to eight counseling sessions, while some follow-up records concerned people who had already died.

South Korea’s system for supporting people at high risk of suicide is failing to connect many of them with prevention centers, according to an audit released on the 2nd. The Board of Audit and Inspection said emergency referrals and psychological counseling both showed serious gaps.

Between August 2022 and 2024, fire authorities transferred 24,798 suicide-attempt patients to emergency rooms. They provided prevention centers with information on 12,452 of them, leaving 12,346 cases, or 49.8%, without a referral. A 2022 revision to the suicide prevention law requires police and fire authorities responding to suicide attempts to pass personal information to prevention centers and other relevant agencies.

The audit attributed the shortfall partly to unclear responsibilities. When police and firefighters respond together, the rules do not clearly state which agency must send the information to a prevention center. Police referrals increased from 38,491 to 49,492 between 2023 and 2024, while referrals from fire authorities declined.

A larger blind spot involves people who arrive at emergency rooms on their own. Of 121,178 suicide-attempt patients treated in emergency rooms from 2020 through 2024, information on 98,694, or 81.5%, did not reach prevention centers. Emergency medical institutions have no legal obligation to provide it.

The centers offer up to eight counseling sessions with the patient’s consent. Yet only 10,536 of the 186,373 high-risk people referred by police and fire authorities from August 2022 through 2025 agreed to all eight sessions. Among people managed by prevention centers from 2020 through 2024, 44.3% ended case management before receiving eight sessions. The audit also found 402 cases where calls or text messages recorded as follow-up counseling were sent after the person had already died. Support for bereaved families was similarly limited: police referred only 3,591 people, or 2.9%, of the 123,513 relatives of the 14,872 people who died by suicide in 2024.

About this summary

Originally published by Hankyoreh in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

More Stories

From Our Blog