The Acquisition of National Identity: A Comparison of In-country and Over-seas Korean Adolescents

한국청소년과 재외교포 청소년의 민족정체감조사 비교

The purpose of the present study was to investigate methodological and theoretical problems in measuring the acquisition of national identity of in-country and over-seas Korean adolescents. The subjects consisted of 344 in-country and 89 over-seas (total 433) adolescents. 14 to 26 years of age. Data were collected with the use of two questionnaires. The Cognition of National Characteristics(CNC) and The Measure of National Belongings(MNB). As statistical measures. F-test and Pearson's correlation coefficient were used. The results are disclosed as follows; 1) The concept of national identity organized not only cognition of the national characteristics in multi-dimension which is related each other, but also a sense of belonging. 2) Two measuring methods(CNC and MNB) for this study are closely related. 3) Overseas Korean adolescents performed more than in-country Korean adolescents in 5 sub-national characteristics(language, social norm, history of the nation, & breaking with ideological thinking) except the consanguinity, of CNC and MNB. Crisis hypothesis was supposed as alternative factor to explain that overseas Korean adolescents cognified about the national characteristics and feel a sense of belonging more than the in-country respondents. 4) Some demographic variables, such as age of the respondents, place of birth, level of understanding Korean language, are contributed to acquiring national identity.