Today is the 2nd anniversary of the suicide of Shawn Matthews. Arguably, the most renowned Korean expat blogger in the early-middle of this decade, who helped open up Korea to foreigners coming over to work, before everyone started getting blogs of their own or meeting together via Facebook. The comments to even his most basic of blog posts usually ran quite long and had their own sense of community in itself. He also wrote a book on his experiences in Korea. He later picked up and moved on to China, to give the ESL experience a shot over there. Although his China blog didn’t get as much as a following as his Korea one, he looked to be having a sunny outlook there, as well. But things went sour in his life in the spring of that year, so much as that he eventually jumped to his death from the top of his apartment building and shook up the online expat communities in China and Korea. I was never much of a reader of his blog, as much as I was for Swiss James (IMO, the last great blogger of the early Korean blogosphere.), who also moved on to China, but I do know of how much Shawn’s words made for a sense of comfort to many Korea newbs looking to get a feel for what its going to be like before taking the plunge. And his brand of upbeat outlook ran counter to the overly-paranoid-people-twitching-off-in-a-corner type of negative blather found on Daves. And that deserves a raise of a glass.

But I certainly don’t know why these tragic events seem to come in groups at a certain time. Such as the Mike White tragedy, which is finally getting picked up by Korean-language media. But also not to mention the rash of recent suicides in Daegu, such as the one downtown and the one in Suseong-gu.

And it’s not stopping there. Two more suicides in Daegu recently occurred, as well. A 15 year old girl in Hyomok-dong, depressed over an issue she was having with her boyfriend, leapt from her apartment building a week ago, only to succumb to her injuries, yesterday. Also in Hyomok-dong, a 27 year old woman, after repeatedly failing a service exam in order to gain employment with the goverment, hung herself in her bathroom.

So many grieving friends and families hunkering down and dealing with loss in Daegu, right now.