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Korea's adult illiteracy rate is 1.7 percent, well below that of advanced nations. The National Academy of Korean Language on Monday said it compiled the statistic from the result of a basic literacy test conducted between September and November, the first since 1970.
The survey was conducted by testing 12,000 adults aged 19-79 years from a total of 5,212 households in 16 municipalities and provinces, classified by sex, age, and job. Some 620,000 people in the age group out of the entire population are illiterate, the academy said. In 1945, the year when Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule, illiteracy was 77.8 percent. After a nationwide campaign between 1954 and 1958, the rate drastically dropped to 8.9 percent in 1966 and to 7 percent in 1970.
An academy official said global average illiteracy is 60.8 percent in underdeveloped countries, 10.9 percent in developing nations, and about 2.3 percent in developed nations. "Therefore, we can say that Korea has joined the group of advanced nations in terms of basic literacy rate."
The more books subjects read, the higher they scored for literacy, and the more hours they spent watching TV, the lower. Some 83.4 percent owned Korean dictionaries.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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