7/10 South Koreans Support The Government’s North Korean Human Rights Awareness Campaign

A poll released Thursday showed that seven out of ten South Koreans agree with the government of Yoon Suk Yeol’s efforts to bring attention to the terrible human rights situation in North Korea.

A survey of 1,000 adults was done by the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council (PUAC) from March 24 to 26. Seventy-five percent of the people who answered the survey said they agree with the government’s plan to raise awareness about North Korea’s human rights.

The PUAC is a presidential advisory group that was set up to make policies for democratic and peaceful unification. The survey is done every three months to find out what the public thinks about unification.

People who said they were liberal were more likely to support the government’s plan, with 77 percent of liberals saying they were in favour of the move.

Among the people who said they were politically conservative or neutral, 69.3% and 68.8% said they agreed with the government’s position.

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The result seems to go against the common belief that liberals don’t like it when the government tries to bring attention to the North’s human rights abuses in public because they think it could anger Pyongyang.

The conservative Yoon administration, which has been in power since May of last year, has been tough on the secretive regime’s violations of human rights. This is what led to the result.

South Korea co-sponsored a U.N. General Assembly resolution on the North’s human rights in December of last year. This was the first time in four years that South Korea had done so. In March, South Korea made public for the first time an annual report on the North’s violations of human rights.

Even though the North’s missile and nuclear threats are getting worse, almost half of the people who answered the poll said they thought Pyongyang should get help and try to work together.

47.8 percent of those who answered thought that the North could be a partner for cooperation and support. This was the highest number since 48.4 percent in the second quarter of 2019.

Still, 34.9 percent said they don’t think relations between the two Koreas will get better, which is the most since the first quarter of 2015. The survey showed that 44.2 percent didn’t think relations between the two Koreas would change, while 19.3 percent thought they would get better.

At a confidence level of 95 percent, the poll can be off by up to 3.1 percentage points.