A Study on the Sense of Social Distance of POLICE Trainees towards North KOREAN Refugees

This study was designed to identify the perception towards social minorities and the variables which influence such perception for 230 preliminary police trainees of the Central Police Academy. The data were collected through the survey questionnaires and a multiple regression analysis was performed to conduct frequency anal-ysis, descriptive statistics, and learn about the sense of social distance. The analytical results are as follows. First, the average value of the sense of social distance towards North Korean refugees perceived by police trainees is 5.10 or higher, whose hierarchical priority is not clear, yet the questionnaires of whether they are accepted as members of the family showed a relatively low average value(4.30). Second, reviewing the final multiple regression analytical results by entering negative stereotypes and nega-tive feelings, it was shown that negative feelings(β=-9.887 p <.001) have a significant influence on the sense of social distance of North Korean refugees of the police trainees. This indicates that the higher the negative feelings, the higher the sense of the social distance towards the North Korean refugees, which results in the difficulty of accepting them and the greater sense of social distance. This study is meaningful because it presented the rela-tionship between the sense of social distance and the influential variables towards the North Korean refugees for the police trainees who will become the preliminary police officers. Notwithstanding the results of this study, there are limitations on the number of samples, sample selection method, and cross-sectional study.