By Oh Hyun Woo and Kim Hwaya
The overwhelming majority of Koreans say they are proud of their ethnicity, according to the results of a recent survey commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism released on Dec. 9.
Covering the people’s perceptions and values this year, the poll found that 83.9% of respondents said they are proud to be Korean. Most gave high marks to traditional Korean culture and relics (93.3%), moral culture (85.5%) and K-pop (92.8%), calling all three “excellent.”
The survey result also found high satisfaction with life overall, with 63.6% saying they are “generally happy” and 68.3% “finding value” in their jobs.
The overwhelming choices for society’s most negative features, however, were “conflict between liberals and conservatives” and “economic polarization,” with 91.8% saying such struggle is a major source of social conflict and 90.6% calling economic polarization “serious.”
As the seventh of its kind conducted since 1996, the ministry-commissioned study was done on 5,100 adults nationwide by Gallup Korea.
hyunw54@korea.kr