Background: Timely detection of suicide warning signs is important for suicide surveillance and prevention, but little is known about how these signs are distributed across pre-death time periods at the population level.Objective: This study aimed to characterize the temporal distribution of suicide warning signs prior to death and to examine how the types of warning signs vary across different pre-death time periods.Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 102,888 suicide decedents aged ≥10 years using the Korean National Investigations of Suicide Victims Through Police Records (2013–2020). Warning signs were classified into verbal, behavioral, and emotional domains. For temporal analyses, we included decedents with at least one documented warning sign and non-missing timing information. Timing was grouped into six intervals from within 1 week to over 1 year before death.Results: Warning signs showed marked temporal clustering, especially within 1 week before death and more than 1 year before death. Within 1 week of death, warning signs were predominantly verbal (55.0%), most commonly references to suicide or death (23.5%). More than 1 year before death, warning signs were more often emotional (40.7%), particularly depressed mood (24.2%), and behavioral signs such as self-harm, prior suicide attempts, or substance use (16.8%).Conclusions: Suicide warning signs showed distinct temporal patterns before death, with differences in the prominence of verbal, behavioral, and emotional signs across time. These findings highlight the importance of considering temporal dynamics in suicide warning signs and may inform more time-sensitive approaches to surveillance and prevention.