There's an excellent series over at the Ask a Korean website about South Korea's stunningly high suicide rate. The blogger there, known by the name "The Korean," generally starts in a humorous vein but his posts often pursue serious topics analytically.
His observation, that I wasn't really aware of, is that the Korean suicide problem is a recent development – very recent: post 1997 (which was a transformative date in Korean history because of the IMF Asian financial crisis of that year). Up until then, Korea's rate was lower than would be predicted based on other socio-economic factors. This is why, he eventually explains, culturalism is not a good explanation for the problem.
Considering that The Korean blogger is, in fact, a lawyer working in DC (according to his online bio), he makes a pretty trenchant observation:
"What
is it about modernization that causes suicide? Modernity comes with
capitalism and individualism, which travel hand in hand. Reduced to its
core (and thus risking gross over-generalization,) modernity causes
suicide because it commodifies individuals."