It seems to make sense that China has the lowest suicide rate in the world. Chinese people are also known to have a very low rate of suicide even among the Asian population living in the US. On the other hand, Korea, my birth country, has been the country with the highest suicide rate over the past 15 consecutive years among OECD, or industrialized countries. Living in that country is really tough. The societal pressure, discrimination of all sorts, competition. constant comparison are too intense in everyday life.
Suicide news floods major media outlets every day. Suicide in Korea is more of a social issue, social murder and a social phenomenon rather than a purely personal issue as in Western countries, generally speaking. I often come across news that 3 or more men and women ( I haven't seen 2 ) in Korea met through the internet, SNS and committed suicide together. Recently, I saw the news that two women in their 20's and one woman in her 40's met from online and killed themselves by carbon monoxide poisoning (aka 번개탄, one of the most favorite suicide methods in Korea) in a car.
These days, news of family murder-suicides caused by extreme financial difficulties and debt is exploding. In addition, suicides of victims (mostly young people in their 20's 30's) who were defrauded by scams taking advantage of institutional/legal loopholes of Korea's unique lease/rent system (aka ì „ì„¸) are also being reported continuously. Korea probably far exceeds Japan and China (the incident in the original post seems to be an exceptional case) in group suicides, family murder-suicides, youth suicides as well as elderly suicides. Treating the prevalence of suicides as a passing trend would be an underestimation of the issue in Korea. Suicide including group suicide in Korea is a chronic social pathology. It is indeed a lamentable deplorable situation where no signs of resolution or alleviation are in sight.