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By Choi Sung-jin
Seven out of 10 Koreans feel anxiety that they or their family members could become the victims of hate crimes, a survey shows.
According to the survey results released Friday by Realmeter, 72.8 percent of the respondents said they experienced such anxiety, more than three times higher than the 27.2 percent who answered that they did not.
People in every region and class have had such feelings of insecurity. Women (80.0 percent) had more of it than men (65.4 percent). Koreans living in the two southern provinces of Gyeongsang and Jeolla also show the highest rate of "yes" answers, at 76.0 percent.
By age, 30-somethings show the deepest sense of unrest with 80.9 percent.
By occupation, housewives are most anxious with 84.2 percent, followed by students (75.3 percent), office workers (75.2 percent), the self-employed (70.4 percent) and manual workers (60.8 percent).
As for the reasons for hate crimes, the largest share of respondents (42.5 percent) cited social inequality and consequent disgruntlement, followed by failure to control anger (22.4 percent), mental disorders (14.2 percent), extreme neglect of human life (10.2 percent), stress (6.6 percent), and drug abuse, including drinking (4.1 percent).
As countermeasures, the biggest proportion (38.0 percent) pointed to tougher punishment, followed by easing social inequality (33.9 percent), better management of mental patients (13.8 percent), enhancing public security (12.5 percent) and stricter controls of substance abuse (1.8 percent).
Realmeter conducted the survey of 500 adults on Oct. 20, through cellphones, smartphone apps, and wired and wireless auto response systems. The survey's response rate was 7.9 percent, and it has a confidence rate of 95 percent with a sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
