Are South Korea's gun laws preventing US military suicides?

South Korea mostly suicide-free for U.S. troops
By Gregg Zoroya
USA Today
Posted : Monday Feb 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 troops to seek help and to look out for one another, and that effort is paying off.

Last 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),” said 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, troops are effectively barred from keeping private firearms because of strict national gun control laws.

“Most soldiers in the military, the majority, commit suicide through firearms,” said Maj. Gen. Edward Cardon, commander of 2nd Infantry Division and some 10,000 soldiers in South Korea. “So the restrictions on firearms is clearly a factor (in reducing the deaths).”
read more here