Abstract

The present study investigated individuals' perception of important social issues in Korea. Based on previous research(Hahn, 1994; Hahn & Kang, 2000), a checklist containing 370 social issues was created. This checklist was administered to 1600 Koreans(812 college students, 788 adults) residing in 5 regional areas in Korea during the period of December 2004 and February 2005. Data were analyzed by the respondents' age, sex, and residing areas, and findings were compared to those of the two previous studies conducted in 1994 and 1999. Major findings of the study are as follows. First, across the three surveys, over 50% of the respondents consistently indicated the following four items as important social issues in the Korean society: political corruption, environmental pollution, the education system that is driven too much for college entrance, employment difficulty for local college graduates. Second, more than 50% of the respondents in the current survey indicated the following 12 items as important social issues that must be resolved: high unemployment rate, political corruption, environmental pollution, education system, overall difficulty of getting jobs, the nation's distrust in politics, hardships of life among the working classes, political incompetence, people with defective personal credit standings, employment difficulty for local college graduates, political instability, corruption of public servants. Third, analyses on the top 30 social issues across the three surveys revealed a positive and significant rank-order correlation for a five-year period(i.e., 1994-1999, 1999-2004), but not for a ten-year period(i.e., 1994-2004). Implications of the study and directions for future research are discussed.