This photo taken in Paju, a South Korean border city, shows Mount Songak in North Korea, Tuesday. A poll released on Wednesday shows that 32 percent of South Korean respondents said unification with North Korea is unnecessary, a record high. Yonhap

Skepticism is growing about the prospect of a unified Korean Peninsula, a recent poll shows.

According to a survey released on Wednesday by the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, a constitutional organization established to counsel the president on the issue, 32 percent of respondents said unification with North Korea is unnecessary, a record high.

While 10 percent said unification is completely unnecessary, 22 percent said it is somewhat unnecessary. Compared with the latest results conducted in the second quarter of 2023, the rate soared by 7 percent.

Meanwhile, 66.9 percent said they believe unification is completely or somewhat necessary. The rate is the lowest since the second quarter of 2020 when 65.5 percent said so amid the regime's intensifying effort to develop its weapons program after its failure to reach diplomatic deals with Washington twice in 2018 and 2019.

Support for unification is especially low among young people. While 71 percent of people in their 60s or older said it is necessary, less than 59 percent of those in their 30s said so.

Over the last two years, North Korea has reinforced its relationship with Russia while openly supporting the Kremlin's war efforts in Ukraine amid fears of a new Cold War.

Asked whether they are concerned about the ties, 71.4 percent of the respondents said they are either highly or somewhat concerned, while 25.9 percent said they are not.

When asked about North Korea's possible motive behind leader Kim Jong-un overseeing the military exercises in recent months, 31.4 percent said the move was the regime's response to South Korea's joint military drills with the U.S., while 30 percent said he did so as a means of strengthening diplomatic leverage for future negotiations with Washington. Only 15.8 percent said the move was motivated by an intention to attack and invade South Korea.

Most respondents expressed their support for South Korea's alliance with the U.S. More than 81 percent said the level of the relations should be either strengthened or maintained. Only 16 percent said areas of the alliance should be downgraded.

On that question, political orientation appears to be a major factor. Support for the alliance was especially high among those who considered themselves conservatives, with over 85 percent saying it should be expanded or maintained, compared with 70.5 among those who considered themselves liberals.

When asked whether they are aware of the Constitution clause stipulating that South Korea must pursue peaceful unification with North Korea based on the basic free democratic order, 40.4 percent said they were unaware of it.

Nearly 58 percent said the United States has the biggest influence when it comes to the unification of Korea, followed by China at 29.7 percent, Russia at 3.4 percent and Japan at 3 percent.

In the report, Lee Ho-ryoung, an analyst at Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a think tank, called on the government to focus more on developing strategies to influence North Korean society in cooperation with other countries.

"We need policies that have not been tried before, ones that could influence North Korean society using invisible, non-physical ways," he wrote.