What Koreans Actually Die Of: The Top 10 Causes of Death, and the Real Reason Korea's Suicide Rate Tops the OECD

There are two statistics about Korea that foreigners hear more often than any others. One is that it is one of the longest-lived countries on earth. The other is that it has the highest suicide rate of any advanced economy.

Both are true. And they don’t contradict each other — they are two different faces of the same thirty years.

This piece is built on the confirmed results of the “2024 Cause of Death Statistics” from Korea’s National Data Agency (formerly Statistics Korea). It lays out what Koreans actually die of, and where the suicide-rate story differs from what you’ve probably heard.

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What do Koreans die of?

In 2024, 358,569 people died in Korea — an average of 980 a day. That works out to 702.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up 1.9% from the year before, but most of that rise is simply the population getting older. Adjusted for age structure, the death rate actually fell by 5.1, to 294.6.

📊 Korea's top 10 causes of death (2024, deaths per 100,000 people)

Rank	Cause of death	Rate	Deaths	Share
1	Cancer (malignant neoplasms)	174.3	88,933	24.8%
2	Heart disease	65.7	33,539	9.4%
3	Pneumonia	59.0	30,103	8.4%
4	Cerebrovascular disease	48.2	24,612	6.9%
5	Suicide (intentional self-harm)	29.1	14,872	4.1%
6	Alzheimer’s disease	23.9	12,223	3.4%
7	Diabetes	21.7	11,064	3.1%
8	Hypertensive diseases	16.1	8,229	2.3%
9	Liver disease	15.3	7,787	2.2%
10	Sepsis	15.1	7,730	2.2%

These ten explain 66.7% of all deaths. Within cancer, lung cancer (38.0) is the runaway leader, followed by liver cancer (20.4), colorectal cancer (19.0), pancreatic cancer (16.0), and stomach cancer (14.1). Stomach cancer was once Korea’s signature cancer, but its mortality rate has fallen 19.5% over the past decade — the payoff of a national screening program that gives everyone over 40 a free endoscopy every two years.

Some things quietly improved. The transport-accident death rate fell 39.8% in a decade to 6.8, and respiratory tuberculosis fell 41.6%. Infant mortality stands at 2.4 per 1,000 live births — well below the OECD average of 4.2.

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Split it by age and the picture changes completely

In the overall ranking, suicide sits at number five. But break the numbers down by age and a feature appears that sets Korea apart from almost every other country.

From the teens through the 40s, suicide is the leading cause of death in Korea. Among people in their 20s, 54.0% of all deaths are suicides; among teenagers, 48.2%. In 2024, for the first time, suicide (26.0%) also overtook cancer (24.5%) among people in their 40s.

🔎 Leading cause of death by age group (2024)

Age group	Leading cause	Share of deaths in that group
10s	Suicide	48.2%
20s	Suicide	54.0%
30s	Suicide	44.4%
40s	Suicide	26.0%
50s	Cancer	34.5%
60s	Cancer	40.6%
70s	Cancer	35.3%
80+	Cancer	16.3%

This table is easy to misread. Suicide’s large share among the young doesn’t mean young people are dying by suicide at higher rates — it’s also that very few young people die of illness at all. The actual suicide rate (per 100,000) rises steadily with age.

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Why is the suicide rate the highest in the OECD?

In 2024, 14,872 people in Korea died by suicide — an average of 40.6 a day. The rate of 29.1 per 100,000 was up 6.6% from the year before, marking the highest level in 13 years, since 2011.

For international comparison, adjusting Korea’s age structure to the OECD standard population gives a rate of 26.2. The average across the 38 OECD countries is 10.8.

How long has it been like this? A phenomenon under 30 years old

The most common misconception is to explain this as “an old East Asian culture.” The statistics don’t support that.

• Until the mid-1990s, Korea’s suicide rate sat around 10 per 100,000 — similar to, or sometimes lower than, Western advanced economies.
• The 1997 Asian financial crisis: the rate went from 13.1 that year to 18.4 in 1998 — a jump of more than 40% in a single year.
• The 2003 credit card crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis — every economic shock was followed, one or two years later, by another spike.
• After peaking at 31.7 in 2011, the rate declined gently through 2017, then seesawed before rising for two straight years in 2023 and 2024.

In other words, Korea’s suicide-rate curve almost exactly overlaps with the graph of its economic shocks. The dominant reading among researchers is that a country that went from an agrarian economy to an advanced one in 30 years saw the old system — children supporting their aging parents — collapse first, while public pensions and a social safety net arrived late. What happened in that gap is what the numbers record.

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The most at-risk people aren't the young

In foreign coverage, Korean suicide is usually consumed through the image of students crushed by exam competition or K-pop idols. The statistics point somewhere else.

📈 Suicide rate by age and sex (2024, per 100,000 people)

Age group	Total	Male	Female
10s	8.0	7.4	8.7
20s	22.5	26.4	18.3
30s	30.4	39.5	20.4
40s	36.2	51.1	20.9
50s	36.5	54.9	17.8
60s	31.9	49.5	14.9
70s	35.6	57.0	17.5
80+	53.3	107.7	24.1

Two things stand out.

First, the highest-risk group is men aged 80 and over (107.7) — 3.7 times the national average, and 4.5 times the rate for women the same age (24.1). Korea’s suicide problem is, at its core, an elderly problem.

The number that sits next to it is elderly poverty. The relative poverty rate for people 65 and over, measured by disposable income, was 35.9% in 2024. That’s an improvement from 46.5% in 2011, but still among the highest in the OECD. The National Pension was only introduced in 1988, so relatively few seniors have accumulated enough contribution years, and the old custom of children supporting their parents has long since weakened. The generation caught in between is today’s 70- and 80-somethings.

Second, only among teenagers do women die by suicide at a higher rate than men. From the 20s up, men are higher in every age group, and the gap widens with age. This male-female pattern is common across countries, but Korea’s gap (2.5x) is large.

What changed in 2024

The 2024 increase didn’t come from the elderly — it came from middle age.

• 30s +14.9%, 40s +14.7%, 50s +12.2%
• Meanwhile 80+ fell -10.3% and 70s fell -8.7%

As elderly suicide rates have eased under policy measures, the 30s-to-50s have taken their place. The National Data Agency, noting that suicide became the leading cause of death among 40-somethings for the first time, cited economic, psychological, and physical factors together — while adding that a precise causal analysis requires the police’s sudden-death statistics and a Ministry of Health and Welfare field survey.

The “2024 Suicide Prevention White Paper” ranks the recorded motives as ① mental and psychological problems, ② economic and living problems, ③ physical illness. The order has barely changed from year to year.

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Is Korea doing nothing?

No — and a few indicators show the policies are working.

• Restrictions on the sale of charcoal briquettes and other specific means, plus physical barriers such as improved bridge railings, have been in place since the mid-2010s.
• Under the “Suicide Reporting Guidelines 4.0” (Ministry of Health and Welfare & Journalists Association of Korea), the way the media reports suicide has changed substantially. This article’s decision not to describe methods or locations follows the same standard.
• Since January 2024, eight scattered counseling numbers have been merged into a single 109. Call volume rose from 18,304 a month (2023) to 28,416 a month (first half of 2025), and counseling staff grew from 100 to 140.
• The 8.7% and 10.3% drops in suicide rates among people in their 70s and 80s in 2024 are read as the cumulative effect of expanded Basic Pension and programs aimed at older adults.

Even so, the fact that the overall number has risen again means the groups policy has reached and the groups it hasn’t are drifting apart.

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The bottom line

Koreans mostly die of cancer, heart disease, and pneumonia — and at a very late age. The fact that more than half of all deaths are among people 80 and over shows just how fast this country’s healthcare improved.

At the same time, suicide is the leading cause of death for everyone from the teens through the 40s, and the suicide rate for men 80 and over is 3.7 times the national average. The two sentences are the front and back of the same compressed growth. Korea became a country where people live long — but the social preparation for living long is still catching up.

So reading these statistics as “Korea’s national character” misses the point. They are closer to a record of what a society pays when it changes too much in a single generation.