The government began building a public pension system in 1988, but people say that in most cases the payments barely cover basic living costs, and many of the oldest South Koreans are not covered because they were past working age when the system was created. A government report in 2011 said that only 4 of every 10 people over 65 had a public or private pension or retirement savings.

And as the woman who poisoned herself in August discovered, the law denies welfare to people whose children are deemed capable of supporting them. That leaves some parents the humiliating choice of asking for help from their children or their government, which can grant exemptions if they can prove their children are unwilling or unable to help. In a country that puts great value on retaining face, experts on the elderly say that is a painful choice. Professor Park said some kill themselves because they feel betrayed; others are driven by a fear of harming their family’s chances of getting ahead.

They are succeeding at alarming rates; the suicides among people 65 or older ballooned to 4,378 in 2010, from 1,161 in 2000. The number of suicides among other adults and teenagers also surged, though those deaths are generally attributed to the stress of living in a highly competitive society rather than the changes in the family structure that are driving the elderly to despair.

Until the country’s rapid-fire industrialization in the late 1900s, South Korean life followed a well-trod path. Parents lived with their eldest son’s family — parents without a son often adopted one from a relative, which also continued the male lineage of the family — and sacrifices were rewarded. Historically, towns would erect monuments to their “filial children,” and some rural towns still award prizes, like televisions or cash, to solicitous adult children.

As the chances for riches grew in recent years, parents began going to lengths to try to ensure their children’s success, and by extension their family’s, that make other countries’ versions of helicopter parenting seem tame.

Some parents, the “edu poor,” drained their savings to pay for cram schools that operate after regular school and on weekends. A growing number of families even split up for years so the mothers can take their children abroad to become fluent in English, which is crucial to getting good jobs at big corporations.

The fathers of many of South Korea’s crop of golf prodigies, meanwhile, often leave their jobs to become their children’s financial managers.