South Korea had the highest suicide rate among member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2022, data showed Thursday. The report on major factors on social safety presented by Statistics Korea also showed that the country logged the highest ultrafine dust level among OECD member nations. The number of suicides per every 100,000 South Koreans came to 25.2 in 2022, down from the previous year's 26. The figure has been trending down moderately from the peak of 28.5 in 2013, but it remained at the highest level among major advanced nations. Based on the 2020 data, South Korea had the highest suicide rate among OECD member nations, with 24.1 out of every 100,000 people. Lithuania was a distant second with 18.5 and Slovenia with 15.7, followed by Japan with 15.4 and Belgium with 14.8, according to the OECD data. According to the data on ultrafine dust, the average ultrafine dust density stood at 25.9 micrograms per cubic meter in 2020, the highest level among the OEC D member nations. Ultrafine particles are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter and are also known as PM 2.5. Chile came next with 24.2 micrograms per cubic meter and Turkey with 22.6 micrograms per cubic meter. The level in Japan came to 13 micrograms per cubic meter, the data showed. The report also showed that South Korea reported 41,433 sexual violence cases in 2022, up 25.9 percent on-year. The increase was mainly attributable to the growth in cybercrime, the agency said. As for driving under the influence, the number of car accidents caused by drunken driving rose 1.1 percent to 15,059 cases in 2022. The rate of drivers experiencing drunken driving came to 3.3 percent in 2022, unchanged from the previous year. The rate of people who drank at least once per month inched up to 54 percent in 2022, marking the first on-year growth in six years. Meanwhile, the proportion of senior citizens living alone came to 21.1 percent last year, up 0.2 percentage point on-year, amid rapid population aging and the fast growth of single-member households, the report showed. Source: Yonhap News Agency