Soldier Suicides rare in some foreign outposts

[unhappycamper]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/18/army-suicides/1928105/

Overall Army rate hits record high: 323 deaths in 2012.

Soldier Suicides rare in some foreign outposts
Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY 11:30p.m. EST February 18, 2013

Even as the Army recorded its worst year in decades for soldiers killing themselves — with 323 deaths in 2012 — there were places in the service where suicides are rare.

One is South Korea, where among the nearly 20,000 GIs stationed there last year, there was one suicide: A soldier hanged himself. Leaders there say they are encouraging soldiers to seek help and to look out for one another, and that effort is paying off.

In December, Army Spc. Andrew Korpash, 26, who is stationed near the Korean demilitarized zone, contacted a chaplain about desperate text messages another G.I. sent after being jilted by a woman. "The thing that got my attention was the actual list of ways he would do it (commit suicide)," says Korpash, a Korean language linguist. "That's when it seemed like it was pretty serious to me."

But there is another reason that underscores how U.S. troops die by suicide, the use of firearms. In South Korea, soldiers are effectively barred from keeping private firearms because of strict national gun control laws there.