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When the Roh Moo-hyun administration came to power in 2003, most Koreans held progressive views on politics, society and the economy. But opinions have gradually swung towards the right since, and now a majority of Koreans hold views that clearly define them as conservatives.
This is according to a survey conducted Sunday by Gallup Korea at the request of the Chosun Ilbo on the 87th anniversary of the paper's founding. The Chosun Ilbo has since 2002 done annual surveys with Gallup Korea to measure the public's ideological temper. The latest was the fifth of its kind.
The most recent survey was composed of five questions in each of three categories:
politics, economy, and society. Each answer was assigned a point value according to its ideological position: progressive answers were rated -50 points, middle-of-the-road answers zero, and conservative answers +50 points.
The results of the first survey in March 2002, during the fifth year of the Kim Dae-jung presidency, was a mean value of 4.1 points, which indicates that most Koreans then held conservative views. In 2003, the first year of the Roh Moo-hyun presidency, the mean value was 1.8 points, closer to progressivism. But since then the rating has clearly moved back towards conservatism, with 1.9 points in 2004, 2.9 points in 2006 and 4.6 points this year.
Based on the average point value of their answers, in 2003, the first year of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, conservatives (those with average point values of +11 to +50) were found to account for 20.5 percent of the population. That figure has risen to 31.9 percent this year. The population of progressives (-50 to -11 points) changed from 12.4 percent to 12.3 percent in the same period. The percentage of "middle-of-the-roaders" (-10 to +10 points) has fallen from 67.1 percent to 55.8 percent.
¡ß Politics
In the politics category, some 83.3 percent of respondents said it is senseless to give aid to North Korea unless that country shows a basic change in attitude. The figure is an increase of 15 percent from four years ago. Other questions also triggered a clear majority of conservative answers: "Union members should restrain from staging strikes as they lower corporations' international competitiveness" (75.6 percent, an increase of 20 percentage points); "National unification should be realized only within a framework of a free market economy" (68.8 percent); "It's justifiable for police to use force when public order is threatened by demonstrators" (62.5 percent); and "The National Security Law should be maintained as it is" (61.5 percent).
¡ß Economy
With regard to the economy, a majority of respondents stressed the need to focus on economic growth (58.9 percent) rather than income distribution (36.4 percent). The number of respondents preferring growth rose by 13 percentage points from the first survey. More respondents (44.3 percent) than supporters (39.3 percent) opposed the idea of enhancing national welfare by collecting more taxes. Meanwhile, a majority of respondents (64.4 percent) supported the progressive idea of imposing limits on land ownership to prevent a minority of people from owning a lot of land.
Many respondents were also found to hold progressive opinions on the following: "Poverty is attributable to poor political and social systems" (57.6 percent); and "Our country's workers are treated poorly by their employers" (52.2 percent).
¡ß Society
When it came to society, most respondents turned out to be conservative on the following topics: "We should always respect our seniors even if they are not much older than us" (67.1 percent); "No sexual relationships should be allowed unless on the assumption of marriage" (52.6 percent); and "We should never do anything that might cause senior family members to lose face, no matter how badly we want to" (49.7 percent).
But a majority of respondents answered progressively on the following questions: "If we love each other we can tie the knot with our significant other despite our parents' opposition" (71.4 percent); and "We should not defer to the opinions of our seniors if they are plainly wrong" (71.4 percent).
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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