About 30 percent of Japanese who answered a government survey said Japan may be involved in a war in the near future, according to the poll results, released Saturday.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula was selected as a factor affecting Japan's security by more than half of respondents to the Prime Minister's Office poll, which is taken once every three years.

The survey covered 5,000 randomly selected voters across Japan in January, of whom 69.2 percent answered.

A record 30.5 percent said Japan might be attacked or involved in a war, up from 21.1 percent in the previous survey, conducted in February 1997, while 23.2 percent said "no," down from 30.2 percent. The poll was conducted in January.

Asked what factors they believe currently affect Japan's security, 56.7 percent named the Korean Peninsula situation, up 10 percentage points, followed by armament and disarmament issues, such as those involving weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

Analysts said the poll results may reflect North Korea's launch of a rocket in August 1998, part of which flew over Japan before plunging into the Pacific, and the intrusion of two suspected North Korean spy boats into Japanese territorial waters in the Sea of Japan in March 1999.

The previous high for the proportion of respondents believing there is a risk of war was 30 percent in a survey conducted in November 1984. , in the middle of the Cold War.

In 1983, the Soviet Union downed a South Korean airplane off Sakhalin, killing 269 people, while a North Korean terrorist bombing in Rangoon, now Yangon, killed 19 people, including four South Korean Cabinet ministers.

The proportion of people who said Japan should beef up the Self-Defense Forces was 13.5 percent, up 6 percentage points, while 8.7 percent said Japan should reduce the size of the SDF, down 6.8 points, and about 60 percent said the SDF should be kept as it is.

On the defense budget, 10.7 percent supported an increase, up 3.3 points, while 13.9 percent backed a decrease, down 8 points. Some 60 percent favored the status quo.

A record 71.6 percent said the Japan-U.S. security treaty helps maintain Japan's peace and security, up 2.2 points.

The office began conducting the poll in 1969.