SEOUL, Sept. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Koreans, in general, tend to react more sensitively to the expressions of hatred on the grounds of political orientation or place of birth, rather than those on account of race or religion.
Prof. Lee Seung-sun from Chungnam National University and Dr. Choi Jin-ho from Hanyang University conducted a survey of 1,000 South Koreans who had the experience of hearing or using expressions of hatred, to find out what they think about such expressions and how much they were exposed to or used such expressions.
The survey showed that the level of the respondents’ awareness about the online expressions of hate on the grounds of political orientation, place of birth, gender and disabilities was relatively high.
However, their awareness level about the hate-based speech on the grounds of race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation and age was relatively low.
The degree of sensitivity to online hate speech was different depending not only on the theme of the hate expressed but also on age, gender and educational level.
Women, younger people, and those with higher education attainment had more sensitive awareness than men, older people and those with lower education levels.
Online expressions of hatred were used almost evenly across all age groups. However, men turned out to use online hatred expressions about 3.7 times more than women.
In response to a question asking why they resorted to hate speech, 27.5 percent said it was because they actually believed what they said to be true, followed by 21.1 percent who said, simply put, their counterparts did it first.
The respondents were aware that disabled people, women, sexual monitories, and elderly people are especially vulnerable to hatred expressions.
J. S. Shin (email@example.com)