Suicidal Students in Korea Go to Healing Centers and Pretend to Be Dead

The Daily Mail sure keeps alive that traditional English "The Wogs Begin at Calais" spirit. This sure seems like a strange practice, but it also seems totally attuned to Korean culture. Whether it works or not is an empirical question. My objection is that it is actually impossible to imagine being dead, as imagination requires consciousness and death is the absence of consciousness. It's like having them imagine what their existence was like before they were born.

Daily Mail

"South Korea is facing a suicide crisis as a huge number of people are becoming depressed due to the pressures of modern life and killing themselves.

The sad statistic that 40 people kill themselves every day is blamed on the country’s hyper-competitive society where young people are under constant pressure to succeed while the middle-aged and elderly complain of ever-growing financial burdens.

But in a strange response to the country's growing suicide epidemic, bizarre 'death experience' schools are being set up to teach depressed pupils to appreciate life again, by showing them what it’s like to be dead.

They are made to sign fake wills and are locked inside coffins where they are given mock funeral services.

And at the Seoul Hyowon Healing Centre in the capital, business is booming. 

Sitting between rows of coffins, with pens and paper littering small desks, the students listen as the head of the centre, former funeral company employee Jeong Yong-mun, explains that the problems we face in life are a part of life. They are told they must accept them and try to find joy in their hardships.

Among the students are teenagers who can’t cope with exam pressure in school, parents who find themselves useless after their children have left home, and the elderly terrified of being a financial burden on their young families....

And the elderly are worried about being a burden as they are four times more likely to commit suicide in South Korea than in any other developed country. 

The only country with a higher death rate is the small South American nation of Guyana, which sees 44.2 suicides per every 100,000 people. In South Korea some 28.9 people kill themselves for every 100,000, according to the World Health Organisation."