We Don’t Belong Here: Adolescents of North Korean Refugee Families and Their Suicidal Behaviors
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Sungjoo Choi,Keuntae Kim |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12709 |
We Don’t Belong Here: Adolescents of North
Korean Refugee Families and Their Suicidal
Behaviors
Sungjoo Choi* and Keuntae Kim*
ABSTRACT
Despite the increasing number of studies that examine the link between immigration and sui-
cide in Korean youths, most have focused on self-harming behaviours among adolescents in
multicultural families, while much less attention has been directed towards those in North Kor-
ean (NK) refugee families. This paper addresses this gap by comparing three determinants of
suicidal behaviours across three groups of Korean adolescents. Data are drawn from the
KYRBS, a nationally representative sample of students in middle and high schools, and the
results indicate that NK youths were 87.2 per cent more likely to have suicidal ideation than
their South Korean peers, that they are 3.7 times more likely to experience suicidal plans and
4.1 times more likely to attempt suicide. These results clearly suggest that immigrant youths,
including NK refugees, are confronting significant difficulties with assimilation, and those dis-
advantages lead to a higher propensity of self-threatening behaviours.
INTRODUCTION
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in South Korea (SK), and it tends to occur dispropor-
tionately among those who are younger than 30 years old. Moreover, suicide has been the number
one cause of death among adolescents –and that suicide mortality rates for teenagers have not
dropped below its baseline level from several decades ago: according to Statistics Korea (2018),
the suicide mortality rate per 100,000 adolescents aged 15–19 was 6.7 in 1983, peaked at 10.7 in
2009 and has been declining since then. Most recent estimates in 2017 indicated that the rate was
7.2. Despite this recent decline, suicide has been the main cause of SK adolescent death for the
past 11 years (Statistics Korea, 2019).
Given these rates, it is not surprising that numerous studies have addressed the complex psycho-
logical, socio-economic and environmental factors that are associated with self-destructive beha-
viours among SK adolescents (M.-H. Kim, et al., 2010; Noh, 2010). One of the more significant
findings in the field is the expansion of suicidal behaviours among various adolescent subgroups,
such as the rapidly increasing number of children from international migrant families, including
North Korean (NK) refugees.
Despite these heightened research efforts, however, studies of the link between immigration and
suicide in Korean youths have focused almost exclusively on the correlates of self-harming
* Korea University Sejong Campus, Sejong City,
The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1111/imig.12709
doi: 10.1111/imig.12709
©2020 The Authors
International Migration ©2020 IOM
International Migration Vol. 58 (6) 2020
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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