Abstract

The important social issues that are perceived by the middle class of Korean people were investigated and compared with the findings from the previos survey (Hahn, 1994). Based on the method used in the previous study, the checklist containing 355 social issues were administered to 1771 college students and their parents in 5 regional areas in Korea. The collected data were analyzed by age, sex, and regional areas to compare their characteristics with the results of the previous study. The results showed that there were 9 important social issues with more than 50% of participants endorsed. More specifically, the most important issues in order were: ① injustice and corruption of the politicians, ② environmental pollution, ③ injustice and corruption of the public servants, ④ college entrance examination, ⑤ high rate of unemployment, ⑥ social ostracism in school setting, ⑦ authority corruption, ⑧ political weakness of the government, and ⑨ unemployment of the graduates from the local college. Overall, the number of important social issues in 1999 decreased from those in 1994. However, the injustice and the corruption of the politicians seemed to became worse in 1999 than in 1994 (1994, 66.94%; 1999, 75.27%). According to the response rates in the present survey, environmental pollution and traffic issue seemed to be less important than in 1994. The findings based on the analyses by age, sex and the regional areas were similar to the previous study of 1994. Finally, the limitations of this study and suggestions for the future study are discussed.