Suicide deaths among South Korean elementary, middle and high school students rose sharply over the past five years, according to Education Ministry data submitted to the National Assembly. The figures show 1,218 student deaths by suicide from 2020 through 2025, with the annual total reaching 244 last year, the highest in the period covered by the data.
In 2020, 148 students died by suicide. By 2025, the annual figure was 96 higher, an increase of 64.9 percent. The yearly totals cited in the data rose from 148 in 2020 to 197 in 2021, 194 in 2022, 214 in 2023 and 221 in 2024 before reaching 244 in 2025. Daegu and North Gyeongsang also recorded a combined increase of about 40 percent over the five-year period.
The data show scale, not a single cause
The numbers describe outcomes, not a single cause. They do not establish why individual students died or identify one intervention that would reverse the trend. They do, however, give education authorities a measure of how the problem has changed while schools and local governments decide where counseling, early identification and other student-support resources need to be concentrated.
The national rise makes longitudinal monitoring important because one year's movement can be difficult to interpret in isolation. Future data will show whether 2025 was a peak or part of a continuing increase. For schools and policymakers, the immediate value of the dataset is that it provides a consistent multi-year baseline for evaluating prevention and mental-health support rather than relying only on individual cases.