In April 1991, during a student demonstration in South Korea, a woman set herself on fire and threw herself from a railway bridge. Self-immolations by students and workers protesting the government occurred frequently throughout South Korea for about a month.

　　In April 1991, during a student demonstration in South Korea, a woman set herself on fire and threw herself from a railway bridge. Park Seung-hee, a female student at Chonnam National University, attended the 20,000 Alumni Resolution Convention held at Chonnam National University at around 2pm on April 29th, and threw herself from behind Yongbong Hall, the main building of Chonnam National University, at around 3pm. He was treated at Chonnam National University Hospital, and developed sepsis due to a bacterial infection caused by third-degree burns over his entire body. On May 17th 1991, he developed sepsis again, and died of illness on May 19th due to a high fever of over 40 degrees and multiple organ failure.

　　On April 26th 1991, in South Korea, Kang Kyung-dae, a university student who had participated in a demonstration against the government of Roh Tae-woo, who had become President of South Korea in 1987, was beaten to death by a police officer. This led to a series of student suicides by fire in protest, and seven students set themselves on fire. After that, there were frequent cases of students and workers setting themselves on fire in protest across the whole of Korea over the next month. The mourning for the dead became a violent demonstration, and the struggle for democracy developed into a situation involving the throwing of stones, Molotov cocktails and tear gas. In the midst of this, there were attempts at suicide in protest, and incidents of people being crushed to death in the midst of demonstrations, and the struggle became even more heated, with suicides being reproduced.

　　Even after the Gwangju Uprising, in which a pro-democracy demonstration by students and citizens was suppressed by the South Korean military on May 18th 1980, the South Korean military government continued to suppress student movements and other forms of protest. At Seoul University, Jeon Se-jin and Ki Jae-ho committed suicide by burning themselves to death on April 28th 1986. Chon Se-jin died on May 5th and Ki Jae-ho died on the 26th. Two students from Seoul University, Chon Se-jin and Ki Jae-ho, who were shouting anti-American slogans at a demonstration against war and nuclear weapons, committed suicide by burning themselves to death in protest. From there, a wave of extreme protest suicides began to unfold. On May 20th, a student named Ki Dong-soo committed suicide by setting himself on fire in the middle of a student rally. The next day, on May 21st, a female student who felt remorse for the situation committed suicide by drowning herself. The student movement of May 1986 was truly a time of death, injury and suffering. In the field of democratization movements from the 1980s onwards, there were frequent cases of self-immolation in protest against political injustice.