Recently compiled data finds the South Korea is a more racially intolerant nation in comparison to its neighboring countries, Japan and China, which runs contrary to the profile of prosperous nations.
According to a report in the Washington Post, two Swedish economists set out to determine whether or not economic freedom correlated with racial prejudice. But in order to somehow quantify such abstract data, the duo sought the help of the World Values Survey, ”which has been measuring global attitudes and opinions for decades.”
A study carried out by World Values asked participants from 80 different countries to identify from a list various types of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents selected “people of a different race,” and the more frequently citizens of a country responded as such, the country was viewed as less racially tolerant.
Despite sharing traits with more racially tolerant nations in the West and in Asia, and being a “rich, well-educated, peaceful and ethnically homogenous” nation, one in three South Koreans surveyed objected to having a neighbor of a different race.
“This may have to do with Korea’s particular view of its own racial-national identity as unique – studied by scholars such as B.R. Myers – and with the influx of Southeast Asian neighbors and the nation’s long-held tensions with Japan.”
