The analysis of social distance toward minorities among South Korean youth
본 연구의 목적은 한국 청소년이 국내 거주하는 소수집단인 조선족, 탈북자, 다문화가족 자녀들에 대해 나타내는 사회적 거리감의 수준과 그 특징을 분석하는 것이다. 분석 결과를 살펴보면, 첫째, 한 국 청소년의 사회적 거리감은 조선족(2.14)-탈북자(1.96)-다문화가족(1.75) 순으로 나타나, 조선족에게 가장 큰 거리감을 보이는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 청소년의 사회적 거리감에 미치는 요인의 영향력 을 검토해보면, 소수집단에 대한 위협의 인지, 단일민족지향성, 종족정체성은 모두 사회적 거리감을 넓히는 영향을 미치고 있었다. 반면 시민정체성은 일관되게 사회적 거리감을 좁히는 영향을 미치는 것으로 파악되었다. 이에 본 연구는 한국 청소년의 다문화교육에 있어서 국민에 대한 재개념화와 대 중매체를 통해 활용할 수 있는 소수집단별 컨텐츠 개발을 제안하고자 한다.
This study investigated the level of adolescents’ social distance to minority groups(the children of multicultural families, North Korean refugees and Chinese Koreans in Korea) and explored factors influencing their social distance. For this, 1095 Korean high school students in Seoul completed a questionnaire including measures such as Korean identity, perception of threat, directivity of homogeneous nation and social distance to four groups(three minority groups and a comparative group). The results are as follows. First, they showed far feeling of social distance to three minority groups in comparison with comparative-group, American group which was found as the favorable group by previous studies. They expressed most intimate feeling to the children of multicultural families, and next North Korean refugees, and Chinese Koreans in Korea in order. Second, by regression analysis of influencing factors to the social distance, adolescents’ perception of threat from minority group was found as the most effective factor to explain early adolescents’ social distance. Their ethnic identity, civic identity and the directivity of homogeneous nation play significant role in the adolescents’ social distance. Korean adolescents tend to accept other groups as same nation people very exclusively with difficulty even though same ethnic people such as North Korean refugees and Chinese Koreans in Korea. This is on the reason that Korean youngsters have feeling the threat toward them.