Over 39% of South Koreans say they believe reunification with North Korea is impossible, the highest number since Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies began its annual poll in 2007.

The results of the institute’s poll released Monday showed respondents who believe reunification is impossible rose 3.5 percentage points from the previous year. The July 1 to 26 poll interviewed 1,200 adults aged 19 to 74 and had a margin of error of 2.8%.

Of the over 60% of respondents who believed reunification was possible, 27.5% said they expected it would take at least 30 years; 16.1% in less than 30 years; 11.2% in less than 20 years; 5% in less than 10 years and 1.1% in less than 5 years, according to the poll.

In the first poll conducted in 2007, 13.3% of respondents said they believe reunification was unattainable.

Nearly 29% of respondents also said reunification was unnecessary while more than 31% said they preferred the two Korea remain divided — the highest level since 2007, according to the poll.

The majority of respondents in their 20s and 30s preferred the current state of division and had no interest in unification, at 55.1% and 55.9%, respectively.

Negative perceptions of North Korea also reached record levels in the South, according to the survey. Over 86% of respondents said they felt threatened by North Korea’s nuclear weapons, while 78.3% said dialogue and compromising with the DPRK was impossible. 

A record 83.3% of respondents said they believed Pyongyang did not want unification.

“It won’t be long before more South Koreans say unification is ‘unnecessary’ than ‘necessary,’” the institute’s head Kim Bum-soo told NK News on Monday. “With a large share of South Koreans viewing North Korea as a separate state, peacefully coexisting while reducing military tensions and conflict could be the starting point for unification.”

North Korean studies professor Hwang Jin-tae of Dongguk University argued that skepticism on reunification reflects the rising security concerns of North Korea.

“The decline in support for unification should not be interpreted simply as a preference for peaceful coexistence over unification or immediately translated into a policy direction,” he told NK News.

South Korea’s government and researchers should develop new ways to explain why unification should remain a long-term goal and what it could mean for future generations, he added.

The survey also polled respondents on South Korea’s relations with the United States. Over 76% of respondents viewed the U.S. as a partner, down 4.5 percentage points from the previous year and below 80% for the first time since 2015.

More than 61% of respondents said they expect Washington to help Seoul in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula, the lowest level since 2009.

Meanwhile, support for South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons reached a record high at 61.1% of respondents, according to the poll.

Distrust of the U.S. appears to stem from President Donald Trump’s unconventional foreign policy, including tariff pressure and efforts to shift the burden of the Strait of Hormuz, Han Ki-ho, a professor at the Ajou Institute for Unification, told NK News. 

Edited by David Choi