[Exclusive] 'Right Beside You'... 16,000 High-Risk Students, Countless "Cries for Help" [Invisible Children] ③

Counseling Sessions Surge 1.6 Times in Four Years
No Regular Collection of Crisis Management Committee Statistics
Half of Regional Schools Suffer Counseling Gaps

It has been confirmed that, as of last year, the number of students identified as being at risk of suicide in elementary, middle, and high schools reached as many as 16,000. However, the deployment rate of professional counseling teachers who can listen to these students’ stories remains stagnant. Critics point out that the public education system is failing to keep up with the demand, resulting in missed golden opportunities for timely intervention.

According to data submitted by the office of Democratic Party lawmaker Ko Minjung to the Ministry of Education on January 24, the nationwide deployment rate of professional counseling personnel (including counseling teachers and counselors) in elementary, middle, and high schools last year stood at only 61.0%, a mere 0.1 percentage point increase from the previous year. While signs of emotional crisis among students are surging, the number of school counseling staff remains woefully insufficient.

The gap between regions, described as a “rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer” phenomenon, was severe. Seoul’s deployment rate was relatively high at 74.3%, but in North Jeolla (42.6%), South Jeolla (51.3%), North Gyeongsang (52.7%), South Chungcheong (53.1%), and Gangwon (55.0%), the rates hovered around half that level.

The total number of students at risk of suicide who require secondary intervention from specialized agencies was tallied at 16,080. Including those classified as “of concern” (68,921 students), nearly 85,000 students are attending school with serious mental health warning signs.

In particular, while the proportion of students at risk of suicide in regular schools was between 1% and 2%, the rate among students in special education schools reached 6.7%. This is more than six times the overall average (1.0%), highlighting that mental health care for students with disabilities is being left in a blind spot.

The warning signs among children are manifesting not just as test results, but as concrete behaviors. In 2024, the number of counseling sessions conducted at Wee Classes (school counseling offices) in elementary, middle, and high schools nationwide reached 3,682,600. Compared to 2,310,000 sessions during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, this represents a roughly 1.6-fold increase over four years. On average, more than 10,000 counseling sessions are taking place daily at schools across the country.

In reality, cases where students have attempted self-harm or suicide, prompting schools to urgently convene a “Crisis Management Committee,” have been reported continuously nationwide. From January to August 2024, the number of Crisis Management Committee meetings related to students who attempted self-harm or suicide was 939 in Gyeonggi, 427 in Seoul, 393 in South Jeolla, 363 in North Jeolla, and 350 in North Gyeongsang. The Crisis Management Committee is a body where the school principal, counseling teacher, health teacher, and others gather to discuss response measures when such incidents occur. These numbers indicate that an equivalent number of students have already sent concrete “cries for help” through their actions within the school. It is estimated that a significant proportion of these students chose to drop out and became out-of-school youth.

However, the education authorities have not even been able to properly grasp the urgency of the situation. The Ministry of Education explained that it does not regularly collect or manage data on the convening of Crisis Management Committees. As a result, the most important indicator showing how frequently and for what reasons students attempt extreme choices is missing from the basic data used for policy formulation.

Park Namgi, Professor Emeritus at Gwangju National University of Education, said, “In reality, the demand for counseling has increased to an incomparable degree compared to the past, but the government seems to be reducing everything simply because the number of students is declining. If statistics from Crisis Management Committees or the Education Administration Information System are utilized properly, at-risk youth can be identified early, so it is essential to manage this data thoroughly.”