Animosity between South and North Koreans has deepened after North's two deadly attacks on the South in 2010 heightened tension on the peninsula, survey results showed Wednesday.
Surveys commissioned or undertaken by the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University showed an increasing number of North Koreans and South Koreans regarded each other as enemies in 2011.
The institute conducted in-depth interviews from April 2 to June 2 of 127 North Koreans who defected to the South last year. The polling agency Gallup carried out a phone survey on 1,200 South Korean adults in July of last year at the request of the institute.
Of the defectors, 15.4 percent said they had viewed South Korea as their enemy in 2011, the survey said, slightly up from 15.2 percent to the previous year.
Seventeen percent of South Koreans showed hostility toward their communist neighbor last year, a five-percentage surge from 2010, it noted.
Analysts attribute the result to soured inter-Korean relations that fell to their lowest ebb in decades after 50 South Koreans died in 2010 in the North's shelling of a border island and the sinking of a South Korean warship near the tense western sea border.
"As confrontations between South and North Korea have escalated military tension, members of the societies have learned to be hostile toward each other," Prof. Kim Byung-ro, who conducted the survey, said.
Despite lingering tension, people from both Koreas are in consensus the rivals need to cooperate each other, the survey noted.
It showed 64.6 percent of defectors said the two Koreas should work together, while 47 percent of South Koreans agreed on the necessity of cooperation between the rivals.
Seoul slapped sanctions on Pyongyang in May 2010 in response to the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship earlier that year, though it kept trade through the Kaesong complex intact.
The joint industrial park in the border city of Kaesong opened in 2004 as a symbol of cross-border reconciliation and has been in operation without any major interruptions. (Yonhap)
1 | Teens feel peer pressure to buy luxury goods endorsed by K-pop stars |
![[INTERVIEW] Disney+ 'Big Bet' director on portraying greed and desire](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/af0ee9846e3f45a7b59c1a5b449291c6.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
