On a commission from the Chosun Ilbo, Korea Gallup conducted a telephone opinion poll Monday in which 60.3 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “Even though there have been many spies in the country the government has intentionally not caught them,” while only 26.4 percent thought that, “The government has caught every spy it found.”

More than 80 percent of the respondents said the number of North Korean spies was unlikely to have decreased despite efforts towards reconciliation between the two Koreas. Some 38.9 percent guessed that the number had increased and 43.8 percent said the figure would remain unchanged even after the historic inter-Korean summit on June 15 in 2000. By contrast, only 13.7 percent believed that there was a decrease in the number. Turning to the way people perceive national security issues related to North Korea, a whopping 80.7 percent felt that it is a problem while only 16.7 percent thought that things were on track.

As for the scandal surrounding “Ilsimhoe,” a North Korean spy ring made up of former student activists on which prosecutors recently published their interim investigation results, more than half of the respondents or 52.2 percent said that they felt the case had not been fabricated but 33.2 percent believed that it was likely trumped up. However 47.3 percent said that they were not interested in the case at all, showing that large swaths of the population have grown jaded to security issues.

On the issue of a middle school teacher and member of the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers Union who took his 180 students to an event commemorating the deaths of communist partisan guerrillas in May last year, the majority or 84.1 percent felt that he was out of line and only 7.1 percent agreed with the field trip. The survey of 572 adults nationwide has a confidence level of 95 percent with a margin of error at 4.1 percent.

(englishnews@chosun.com )