North Korea orders officials to halt citizens from taking their own lives

North Korea Dictator Kim Jong Un has issued a secret order to officials all throughout the country mandating them to stop people from taking their own lives after a major uptick in deaths according to Radio Free Asia. 

Getting accurate numbers of anything happening in North Korea isn’t but journalists from Radio Free Asia that reported on the climbing deaths from people taking their own lives were no different based on estimates from South Korea intelligence. 

Deaths via one’s own hand in the hermit kingdom at the end of May had risen by 40% compared to the previous year according to the South Korean National Intelligence Service. 

“There are a lot of internal unrest factors in North Korea due to the hardships of people,” the South Korean spy agency said, an issue that Radio Free Asia said was helping to drive violent crime in the country as its people were struggling to “make ends meet.”

Radio Free Asia also reported that Kim Jong Un allegedly defined taking one’s own life as an “act of treason against socialism,” and ordered local officials in the country to take on measures that would prevent North Korean citizens from hurting themselves. 

An unnamed official from North Hamgyong Province spoke with Radio Free Asia on the condition of anonymity and reported that the confidential prevention measures ordered by Kim Jong Un were relayed in emergency meetings with the country’s leadership. 

Party committee leaders as well as provincial authorities and officials from the country’s city and county levels attended meetings in neach province according to the unnamed North Korean source. 

“Our meeting was held at the provincial party committee’s building located in Pohang district, in the city of Chongjin,” the official from North Hamgyong Province said. 

“The large number of [taking their own lives] in the province was revealed and some officials… could not hide their anxious expressions,” the source told Radio Free Asia. 

North Hamgyong Province had a total of 35 people who had decided to take their own lives since the beginning of the year, and it was noted by Radio Free Asia that in most cases, it was whole families who ended their lives together. 

“[The attendees] were shocked by the disclosure of [pre-death] notes that criticized the country and the social system,” Radio Free Asia reported their source as saying. 

Another unnamed official that attended a similar prevention meeting in North Korea’s Ryanggang Province told Radio Free Europe that their area was also suffering from a shocking number of cases where people had taken their own lives. 

“In the city of Hyesan, a 10-year-old boy was living with his grandmother after his parents died of starvation, but they took their own lives by eating rat poison,” the official explained. “It brought great sadness to all who saw it.”

The unnamed official also told Radio Free Asia about a couple who hung themselves from a tree as well as a family of four that ate potassium cyanide together, adding the move by an entire family was “a final act of defiance against a hopeless system.”

Most of the self-deaths in Ryanggang Province were the result of starvation and extreme poverty according to the official from the region who spoke with Radio Free Asia, adding that the cause of the issue was why government authorities couldn’t find a solution. 

While the authenticity of these reports are difficult to prove, Business Insider, The Sun and India’s WION both picked up the story, and it's not outside of the realm of possibility that things in North Korea are so bad some people are turning to taking their own lives.