Body
The polling firm TNS Korea periodically releases polls on public attitudes toward diplomatic issues in Northeast Asia. Given the contentious tone of public diplomacy among the three countries, the results of an August poll of South Korean views on China and Japan are fascinating.
The poll asked two sets of questions. The first concerned the degree of importance that the respondent attached to relations among South Korea, Japan, and China. The responses differed significantly with respect to educational attainment, with the more educated respondents putting a much greater weight on the importance of these relationships.
Then the pollsters asked the standard questions about favorability towards the other countries. The results show that age, education level, watching Japanese movies or television shows, and perceptions of the United States were all significantly correlated with the South Korean respondents’ attitudes toward Japan. Positive disposition toward Japan was positively correlated with youth, educational attainment, exposure to Japanese cultural products, and affirmative perceptions of the US. But here’s the kicker: in quantitative terms, views of the US were almost twice as influential on attitudes toward Japan than were age, education, or cultural exposure.
Views toward China, in turn, were influenced by age, gender, visiting China, and perceptions of North Korea. Male respondents, older respondents, the respondent’s status of having visited China, and positive impressions of North Korea were all positively associated with attitudes toward China. But here is the astonishing part: favorability toward North Korea was more than twice as influential as the other variables in quantitative terms.
There are many ways to reconcile these results, but one obvious interpretation is older, less educated, nationalistic Koreans who regard North Koreans fundamentally as Koreans, see China in a positive light due to that country’s support for the North. In comparison to their children and grandchildren, Japanese colonialism looms larger in their thinking. In contrast, younger, better educated South Koreans have a more cosmopolitan view, seeing Japan in the context of a liberal US-led order in which both Japan and South Korea have benefitted greatly, and put less weight on the past.
Too bad this latter view appears to have so little traction in current diplomacy which seems to be overwhelmingly focused on the past.
