Two suicides spark copycat fears after Korean actress's death

Two suicides spark copycat fears after Korean actress's deathSeoul - Two women were found dead Friday in South Korea in circumstances similar to the apparent suicide of a top South Korean television and film actress, raising fears of copycat acts, news reports said.

Choi Jin Sil, 39, an icon of South Korean prime-time television dramas, was found hanging Thursday from the shower stall in a bathroom at her Seoul home with an elastic band tied around her neck.

Depression, malicious rumors and fallout from an ugly divorce in 2004 have been cited as factors that drove the mother of two to her death.

A 55-year-old woman was found dead shortly after midnight Friday, also suspended from a plastic band in the bathroom of her apartment in Haenam county in the south-western province of South Cholla, the national Yonhap news agency said. Her family said the woman suffered from depression.

Another woman, identified by her family name Lee, was found dead after hanging herself in a similar way early Friday in her house in Kangnung city on the north-eastern coast.

A psychiatrist at Yonsei University's Severance Hospital in Seoul, Min Seong Gil, was quoted by Yonhap as saying that Choi's death might trigger what is known as the Werther effect.

It describes a duplication of a suicide after media reports and is named after the ill-fated protagonist in The Sorrows of Young Werther, a 1774 novel by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The character commits suicide in the book, which was blamed for inspiring the suicides of some of its readers.

Police said Friday that they have tentatively concluded that Choi's death was a result of an impulsive suicide.

Investigators based their assessment on autopsy results and testimony from the actress's friends and family, the public broadcaster KBS said. (dpa)