A new survey finds that six out of ten South Korean people regard North Korea as a cooperation partner.
 
Main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy Representative Jung Cheong-rae acquired the latest survey by the Unification Ministry and unveiled it on Thursday.
 
The survey conducted among one-thousand people showed that 58-point-two percent of respondents considered the North to be a cooperation partner. Twenty-three percent said North Korea still needs the South’s support and around 13 percent regarded the North as a hostile party.  
 
On methods to resolve North Korea’s nuclear issue, some 37 percent of the surveyed said that dialogue and pressure should be jointly pursued, while nearly 35 percent proposed dialogue and cooperation. Some 12 percent stressed that the South should respond by possessing nuclear weapons and some eleven percent proposed economic sanctions.

The majority of respondents supported the current government’s unification policy of building trust on the Korean Peninsula, as well as President Park Geunh-hye’s idea of unification as an economic “bonanza.”
 
For steps to take place before unification, around 47 percent said improved South-North relations. Nearly 18 percent said expanded consensus among South Korean people, followed by policy related preparation at 15 percent and creating unification funds at 13 percent.
 
The Unification Ministry commissioned Research and Research to conduct the survey between March 7 and 8. The survey has a 95 percent confidence level with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three-point-one percentage points.