Eight Koreans were shot to death by Filipinos in Angeles City, Philippine for last 4 years. It was shocking news for Korean society in Angeles, even in Korea. Angeles city has the third largest Korean population in Philippine after Manila and Cebu city. Even though cruel crimes happened to Korean in Angeles, very few study was conducted regarding the fear of crime victimization among Korean in this city. Exploring the effect factors of fear of crime victimization is very important because it influences the people’s lives directly. Specifically, many scholars agree that the most crucial effect of fear of crime is diminishing the quality of life by affecting people physiologically, psychologically and socially. Fear of crime can generate negative feelings such as anger, frustration or helplessness and can finally lead to severe mental disorder. Moreover, fear of crime can make people change their routine behaviors. people who have fear of crime have a tendency to avoid unsafe places and reduce their outdoor activities. They even move their house to another place due to fear of crime. Therefore, many scholars have conducted a lot of studies to find factors associated with fear of crime for a long time.
Disorder in the community is one of the major factors which they have discussed. In particular, according to the ‘Broken Windows’ theory, disorder is the most powerful factor which affect people’s fear of crime. Broken windows theory is based upon a premise that if the a window is broken and left unrepaired, the remaining windows will be broken. It means that a minor disorder can lead to the huge disorder unless it is immediately eliminated. To be more specific, an unrepaired broken window works as a symbol that no one cares about it and community lost their control. Therefore, people avoid those areas perceived as unsafe and lose their informal social control. On the contrary, criminals approach the area more and more because they recognize it as the safe place from formal and informal control. As a result, more serious crimes happen and people have fear of crime.
This study aims at looking into the relationship between disorder and fear of crime of Korean living in Angeles city. Futhermore, the current study divided the fear of crime into general fear and specific fear, and explored the correlation between them and disorder.
This study conducted survey toward Korean in Angeles city from the 21th of July to 20th of September, 2015. The total number of subjects was 165. The respondents voluntarily participated in this survey with the assistance of Central Luzon Korean Community Association and Korean Policeman who was assigned to Angeles city from Korean National Police Agency. Multiple regression analysis was utilized to analyze the causalities between disorder and fear of crime, disorder and general fear ,and disorder and specific fear.
The result showed that disorder, gender and trust in police were statistically significant factors toward fear of crime and general fear. In other words, research hypothesis was validated for the relationship between disorder and fear of crime, and between disorder and general fear among Koreans. Meanwhile, it was shown that disorder in the community did not have any significant effect on the specific fear and only gender and experienced crime victimization were the statistically significant factors on specific fear among Korean.