Tracking an online trend, and a route to suicide

From their nondescript sixth-floor office, Kim Hee-joo and five other social workers troll the Internet to combat a disturbing trend in South Korea: people using the Web to trade tips about suicide and, in some cases, to form suicide pacts.

"There are so many of them," said Kim, secretary general of the Korea Association for Suicide Prevention, a private counseling group working to decrease the number of suicides, which nearly doubled from 6,440 in 2000 to 12,047 in 2005, the last year for which government figures are available.

One of the recent Internet suicide pacts involved two women who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a one-room apartment south of Seoul.

In another, five young men and women who made a pact over the Internet and had failed in two previous suicide attempts drove to a seaside motel to discuss more effective methods. There, one member of the group had a change of heart and slipped out to call the police.