A KBS survey finds that nearly 90 percent of South Koreans have hostility toward North Korea amid growing security concerns. 

According to the annual survey conducted around Liberation Day, 88-point-one percent of one-thousand-664 adults said they have ill feelings against the North Korean regime, up six percentage points from a year earlier.

Sixty percent said that they have “strong” hostility toward the North, a sharp increase from 50-point-four percent last year. 

More than 78 percent said that they feel anxious about the current security situation, while about 60 percent disapproved of the Yoon Suk Yeol government’s North Korea policy. 

Disapproval of the Yoon administration's North Korea policy increased from about 56 percent in 2022 to 57 percent in 2023 and 60 percent this year. 

As for the North Korea policies that the government should place emphasis on, nearly half of the respondents said that the current government should make “diplomatic efforts for the North’s denuclearization." Others cited inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation in economy and culture.

In order to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, 35-point-four percent recommended South-North dialogue, while 30 percent cited international sanctions. 

Seventy-eight-point-six percent of respondents supported holding an inter-Korean summit. 

The survey, conducted between August 1 and 4, has a 95 percent confidence level with a margin of error of plus or minus two-point-four percentage points.