The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Wednesday it will launch a project to curb the city’s high suicide rate with a goal of cutting the number of victims in half by 2020.

South Korea is notorious for having the highest suicide rate among the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with an average of 33.5 people per 100,000 taking their lives in 2010. It is far higher than averages of 23.3 for Hungary and 21.2 for Japan, which came in second and third, according to government data.

Seoul alone saw a total of 2,772 people who took their own lives, or 26.9 per 100,000 citizens in 2011. The figure is far higher than rates for New York and Tokyo with 5.5 and some 23 out of 100,000 citizens, respectively, the data showed.

With a goal to bring down the number of suicide victims to less 2,000 by 2015 and to 1,361 by 2020, the municipal government said it will launch the “Connecting Hearts 1080” project, through which the city will come up with diverse rescue and prevention measures while promoting a campaign to raise awareness about the value of life.

The city plans to sign a memorandum of understanding with 11 relevant institutions including the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, and other welfare, religious and medical organizations to work together to prevent suicides.

The government will also make an agreement with 12 emergency medical centers across the city to put the suicide victims brought to the hospitals on the list for special attention so as to prevent them from making such attempts again.

A task force involving some 100,000 personnel will also be set up to take care of those vulnerable to taking their own lives by providing counseling services, among other things, according to the officials.

“We will make diverse plans customized for different age brackets along with efforts to strengthen the social safety net,” said a city official. Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon also vowed “a pragmatic and comprehensive approach to the tragic incidents to reduce the suicide rate.”

To shed the disgraceful image of having such a high suicide rate, the metropolitan government has put forth diverse measures, with the latest in January of setting up a comprehensive monitoring system on the city’s major bridges over the Han River, some of the most frequently used places for committing suicide. (Yonhap News)