BUSAN, South Korea — As the author of the novel “I Have the Right to Destroy Myself,” I’m often asked why I think South Korea’s suicide rate is so high. The protagonist in my story is a professional “suicide counselor” who is hired to help clients plan and execute their own deaths. I started writing the novel in 1995, a time when South Korea’s annual rate of suicide was much lower than the average of the other industrialized nations. But it soared in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis — and it has been getting worse ever since.

When the novel was published in 1996 no one, including me, would have thought that suicide could become such a scourge. South Korea has had the highest suicide rate in the industrialized world for eight consecutive years; 14,160 people committed suicide in 2012, an average of 39 people per day and a 219 percent increase from the 6,444 suicides in 2000. It’s the No.1 cause of death for people between the ages of 10 and 30. For people in their 40s, suicide is the second most common cause of death, after cancer. Among the older generations, the numbers are even more bleak.

Suicide is everywhere. I was having a drink with a friend at a bar in Seoul recently and the young bartender asked us if we thought the weather would permit boats trips the next day. Her brother had killed himself a year ago, she said, and her family was planning to take a boat into the harbor, where they had scattered his ashes, for the anniversary. Then my old friend told me that our college classmate, who we had all thought died of a heart attack, had actually committed suicide.

Now, whenever I hear news that a young person has passed away, suicide is the first possibility that comes to mind.