One in 10 high school students in Korea are willing to commit a crime and spend a year in jail if it means pocketing 1 billion won ($900,000).
The finding was based on a survey conducted on 2,000 elementary, middle and high school students on the moral standards of young people by the Hongsadahn Transparency Movement.
When asked if they would be willing to spend a year in prison in exchange for 1 billion won, 44 percent of the high school students aid “yes.” The corresponding percentage was 28 for middle school pupils and 12 for those in elementary school.
Calculating the honesty quotient of the respondents, it was 85 points for elementary school kids, 75 for those in middle school and 67 for students in high school, indicating that moral standard tends to get lower as students age.
On a question which asked if it was alright to keep something that they found by accident, 36 percent of elementary school kids said “yes” while the corresponding numbers were 51 percent for middle school students and 62 percent for high school students.
Similarly, only 16 percent of elementary school children thought it was alright to do illegal downloads on the Internet while as many as 58 percent of middle school kids and 84 percent of high school students thought it was fine.