Really? Just 15% of S. Koreans support humanitarian aid to N. Korea?

Yonhap reports that, according to a poll commissioned by the Database Center for North Korean Human rights, 73.1% of South Korean adults surveyed support approval of a human rights law. That would be even better news if the respondents actually knew what the law would do; I can’t say I do.

(While you’re at NKDB’s site, be sure to have a look at their Google Earth Visual Atlas.)

It’s also good news that less than 20% opposed “meddling” in the “internal” issue of North Korean human rights. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said they were interested in the issue. Asked how to address it, 40% said international pressure, and 32% said dialogue.

The findings fuel my suspicion that nothing has been quite so influential within South Korean society about human rights in the North as peer pressure.

Even assuming that the methodology of this poll is solid, I’m not aware of any base line for those numbers allowing an apples-to-apples comparison showing how the trends have changed. Still, my guess is that these numbers are less sympathetic to Pyongyang than they would have been ten years ago. They also fit with the trends I identified in this post. See also this and this.

By a narrow margin, 50% said that sending propaganda balloons across the DMZ was “not necessary,” while 45.6% said it was. What I wish the respondents had been asked was whether they thought North Korea’s threats of violence were an appropriate reason for the South Korean government to block the launches with the force of law.

The Korea Times, reporting on the very same survey, found that a surprisingly low 15% of South Koreans agree with continuing humanitarian aid to the North, because they don’t believe it’s effective. Can that possibly be right?

Asked whether human rights conditions in the North are getting better or worse, 40% said “worse,” 45% said they’re staying the same, and just 6.5% said they were improving. So much for the Sunshine Policy.

The Korea Times also reports that nearly 40% of South Koreans would like the South Korean government to allow only certain North Koreans to cross the border in the event of regime collapse, and that another 9% would exclude them completely.

The Korea Times spins this as indicative of an unwelcoming attitude by South Koreans toward their brothers in the North, but I might well be among the 9% myself, at least initially. There would be very good reasons to keep North Koreans in place in the event of a collapse. Encouraging hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people to move around an unstable country and across international borders would dramatically complicate the process of providing them with food, clean water, shelter, and medical care. It could spread infectious disease, and would also complicate the reestablishment of security. For more on that topic, read this.