More than nine out of 10 South Koreans do not trust North Korea's Kim Jong-un regime, with most of them also believing the regime is unstable, a poll showed Thursday.

The survey on 1,000 citizens, taken late last month by the National Unification Advisory Council, showed that 61.6 percent of respondents never trust the Kim regime. Another 29.7 percent responded that they are quite distrustful of the regime.

Only 0.3 percent of them said they trust the regime "very much," while another 4.9 percent expressed modest trust toward the communist regime, according to the survey. 

Some 45 percent of the respondents considered the North Korean regime in a quite unstable condition while another 42 percent responded that the regime is very unstable. 

The numbers indicate rampant distrust among South Korean citizens toward the regime notorious for its dismal human rights record and capricious security tactics, which has often escalated tensions on the peninsula.

Meanwhile, a separate survey showed that seven out of every 10 South Koreans think a unification with North Korea is necessary.

The survey on 1,000 adults conducted by the Korea Institute for National Unification said 69.3 percent of respondents said that unification is a must. 

Identical ethnicity was cited as the most frequently-picked reason why unification is necessary, followed by the purpose of removing war threats as well as resolving the issue of inter-Korean families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, according to the survey. 

Some respondents also said that the unification is necessary for South Korea to become an advanced country. 

Slightly more than 60 percent of the respondents saw unification as beneficial to South Korea while only 34 percent said it is beneficial to themselves as individuals. 

The overriding goal of what would be a unified Korea should be economic growth, the 38 percent of the respondents said, followed by security and social stability.  

"(The survey showed) citizens' hope that the government's unification policy could substantially contribute to improving inter-Korean relations and to laying the groundwork for unification rather than remaining at a proclamatory stage," Kim Kab-soo, a researcher at the institute, said. (Yonhap)