Lawmaker introduces bill to strengthen youth suicide prevention data collection

Rep. So Byeong-hun of the Democratic Party of Korea, who represents Gwangju-gap in Gyeonggi Province, announced Thursday that he had introduced a bill to strengthen youth suicide prevention measures — formally titled an amendment to the Suicide Prevention Act and informally known as the Youth Suicide Prevention and Data Collection Act.

Under current law, the state and local governments may conduct psychological autopsies — analyses of a deceased person's psychological and behavioral changes — to inform suicide prevention policy and provide psychological support to bereaved families.

However, So said there has been no legal basis for obtaining the data and information needed to carry out such autopsies, limiting the government's ability to comprehensively analyze the causes of youth suicide and develop effective policy.

In practice, data from the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Ministry of Statistics show that suicide has been the leading cause of death among young people every year since 2011. The number of teenagers who died by suicide reached 396 in 2025, a 45.1 percent increase from 273 in 2016, fueling growing calls for a closer look at the causes and more concrete countermeasures.

The proposed amendment would allow agencies conducting psychological autopsies to request relevant records on youth suicide cases from central government ministries, city and provincial education superintendents, schools and police stations, within the scope necessary for their work. Agencies receiving such requests would be required to cooperate unless there is a specific reason not to do so.

The bill also requires the state and local governments to establish personal data protection measures during the psychological autopsy process, and includes safeguards to prevent sensitive information from being used beyond its original purpose or leaked externally.

"Youth suicide is an issue our society must take seriously," So said. "We will work to protect not only students inside schools but also young people outside the school system — those most easily overlooked — and to safeguard their precious lives."