South Koreans and Japanese need a tougher attitude when it comes to parents who take the lives of their children when they commit suicide, a South Korean expert on suicide prevention says.

In an interview earlier this week, Han Sang Yup, director of the South Korean branch of Befrienders International, said he believes cultural inclinations may make South Koreans and Japanese more tolerant toward suicide than are Westerners.

Still, he said, this cannot justify an act he calls murder.

Han, 79, is in Tokyo for a three-day international conference on suicide prevention.

"I think Koreans and Japanese share a view that those who commit suicide are pitiful, and thus pardonable," he said.

It is for this reason that even murder-suicides involving small children do not draw the same level of condemnation as in Western societies, he said.

Han is also a member of a Japanese association that discusses suicide prevention.

"Many Western nations do not tolerate suicide, especially when children's lives are taken by force," he said. "I call these acts murder."

In Japan, murder-suicides are described with the phrase "muri shinju," or "dying with someone who does not wish to." The phrase lacks the strong denotation of "murder-suicide."

Han said that in societies with large Christian populations, suicide is loathed due to the belief that life is given by God.

Han said the protracted economic slump led to an increase in suicides in South Korea, with the annual rate doubling to 13,055 between 1992 and 2002.

Japan had the second-highest suicide rate among OECD nations in the World Health Organization's 2002 suicide ranking with 32,143 people taking their lives.

South Korea's rate of 14.6 suicides per 100,000 people put it 10th on the list.

Murder-suicides in South Korea, which occur at a rate of approximately two every three days, account for 2 percent of the total, he said.

"Just last Sunday," Han said, "a father killed his wife, daughter, and two sons with an air gun before taking his own life."

Han said that while Japan's history of "honorable death" among samurai warriors may have helped lessen the stigma against suicide here, the Confucian philosophy embedded in his people may be a driving force behind parents taking the lives of their children when they kill themselves.

"The philosophy that attaches great importance to family may have made these parents think they are taking responsibility for the children (by not letting them live without their parental care)," he said. "We need to build a common understanding in society that such an act is wrong."