SEOUL, KOREA - More than eight out of ten Koreans believe that the future will be a surveillance society due to the prevalence of personal information breaches and privacy infringement. The Korean Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said on May 25 that it conducted a survey "General Perceptions on Future Society" as a way to find out what people think about technological progress and future societal change and released the survey results. 

 

As for the most prominent side effects of future technical progress, most respondents answered privacy invasion (89.4%), income inequality (89.0%), worsening of climate change problems (86.9%). Other problems included increasing financial burden due to aging (83.5%), threat to human dignity (83.2%), and weakening of family ties (76.1%).

 

As many as 92.7 percent of respondents answered that the future world will be fraught with international conflicts over energy resources. As for the most promising business areas, 53.1 percent said the alternative energy resources area, followed by medical services related to chronic disease treatment and life extension (45.9%), services in relation to new lifestyles (27.6%), and technology-based environmental restoration (22.0%).

 

The most important values in the future would be "safe living environment" (26.5%), "leisure time" (20.4%), and "health" (20.3%). In contrast, the respondents believed, material values such as "monetary income" (15.0%) would be deemphasized.

 

The survey results will be presented in detail at the 10th International Conference on Future Creative Science to be held for two days between May 27 and 28 at the COEX InterContinental in Seoul's Gangnam.