Nearly 34 percent of South Korean adolescents have thought about killing themselves because of academic pressure, a recent survey showed.

The grim finding came in the National Youth Policy Institute’s survey of 9,060 elementary, middle and high school students conducted from June-August last year.

According to the results, 33.8 percent of students polled said they had considered taking their own lives over the previous year.

The biggest reason was pressure they felt over academic achievement, with 37.2 percent of those who experienced the impulse for suicide giving it as the reason. Anxiety about one’s future career was cited as the second most common reason at 21.9 percent, followed by family conflict at 17.9 percent. (Yonhap)