Warm feelings increase for North Korea

South Koreans’ attitudes toward their compatriots in the North have changed significantly over the past three years, recent polling data suggest. In a survey this year that was also conducted in 2003 and 2004, it appears that South Koreans are more willing to think about the North as a partner in cooperation and less as a nation depending on foreign aid for its survival.
The JoongAng Ilbo and the Survey Research Center at Sung-kyunkwan University have polled 1,000 people annually since 2003.
In 2003, 21 percent of the respondents said their most vivid impression of North Korea was that it was a foreign aid recipient. Only 20 percent of those polled gave that answer last year, and in this year’s survey was chosen by only 16 percent of those surveyed.
In the first survey, 36 percent called North Korea a partner in cooperation. That figure rose to 39 percent last year and 43 percent this year.
In the poll, respondents had a choice of four answers to the question: aid recipient, cooperative partner, nation to be dealt with cautiously or hostile country.
“After South Koreans saw active exchange programs such as the Mount Kumgang tours and the Kaesong industrial complex, inter-Korean relations became more realistic,” said Park Byeong-jin, a researcher at the Survey Research Center. “South Koreans have changed their views in how to treat North Korea based on their sense of relations between the two Koreas.”
About 39 percent of those polled were suspicious or hostile toward the North in the 2003 survey; 36 percent agreed this year.
Asked to select the country they had the most favorable impression of, the United States ranked first and North Korea second in all three annual surveys.

by Special Reporting Team