South Koreans are much more optimistic than Japanese people about the prospects for North Korean denuclearization, an annual survey showed Monday, as a series of summits this year have led to a dramatic defusing of tensions.
Over 60 percent of South Korean respondents believed the North Korean nuclear issue would be resolved within 10 years, while only 10 percent of the Japanese surveyed expected that to be the case.
Despite North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's commitment to complete denuclearization, first made at an inter-Korean summit in late April, 65.1 percent of Japanese respondents thought it would be difficult to resolve the issue, almost unchanged from the previous year, according to the poll conducted by Japanese nonprofit think tank Genron NPO and South Korea's East Asia Institute.