By Kim Rahn
Korean students are more prone to sadness than their Chinese and Japanese counterparts, a survey showed Sunday.
According to the study by the National Youth Policy Institute, 71.2 percent of surveyed young Koreans said they are happy, lower than the 92.3 percent of Chinese contentment and 75.5 percent of Japanese gladness.
The survey was conducted on 2,268 Korean middle and high school students, 1,167 Chinese and 1,144 Japanese students last October and November.
Of the Korean students who answered "yes" to the question, 20.8 percent said they were very happy, far lower than the ratio of Chinese students' 60.2 percent and still less than that of the 27.6 percent in Japan.
Students of the three countries all answered positively when asked whether they were close to family members.
But when asked whether they were happy with life within the family, Korean students showed slightly less satisfaction than the other two groups; 80.3 percent of Koreans, 92.6 percent of Chinese and 81.1 percent of Japanese youth answered their family life was good.
"This shows that family life in reality doesn't meet the expectations of students," a researcher at the institute said.
Korean teenagers were also the least content with their leisure time, with 67.5 percent showing satisfaction, compared to 78 percent of Chinese and 74.7 percent of Japanese respondents.
"This reflects that Korean students spend more time studying and don't have enough free time," the researcher said.
When asked if they will do anything for the country if it is in danger, 83.7 percent of Chinese said yes, compared with 48 percent of Koreans and 23.9 percent of Japanese.
On unification of the two Koreas, the percentage of young Korean people who said they believed unification is very much necessary fell to 23.3 percent from 42.8 percent in 2008.
One third of the students replied that unification is unnecessary.