More than 50% of South Koreans support the permanent strengthening of the alliance with the United States, and more than 90% consider the alliance important, according to a Gallup Korea survey conducted at the request of the South Korean Ministry of Culture.
⠀
The survey results showed that 91.6% of South Koreans believe the bilateral alliance with the United States is important, and 53.7% said it should be “continuously strengthened,” the ministry said. 24.9% believe that the alliance should be maintained at its current level and only 18.1% said that the alliance should be “continuously reduced.”
⠀
At the same time, South Koreans named “assistance in the economic development” of South Korea (44.2%) and “strengthening national security” (42.5%) as the main reasons for the constant development of the alliance. Another 10.5% noted the need for humanitarian exchange and cooperation in the field of scientific technologies, only 2.1% cited cultural exchange and development as the reason.
⠀
82.1% of the population believe that the deployment of the American military contingent in South Korea to one degree or another helps the country’s security.
Regarding the perception of the alliance, 46.5% of South Koreans consider it a “traditional security and military alliance” and 26.5% a “global comprehensive strategic alliance.” Only 15.6% called relations with the United States “ordinary friendly.”
⠀
At the same time, 72.1% of respondents consider the main direction of development of the alliance to be “science and technology”, 62% agree with the economic direction, 53.1% believe that the future of the alliance lies in cooperation in the military and security spheres.
⠀
Overall, 54% of respondents said they felt close to the United States, 20.4% said they felt close to Japan, and China came in third with 7.6%. 53% said economic cooperation with the United States is important, followed by China (34.7%) and Southeast Asia (4.7%). In terms of security cooperation, the United States ranked first at 82.2%, followed by China (8.8%) and Japan (1.6%).
⠀
The survey was conducted from September 4 to 8 among 1,238 people over 18 years of age using an online survey after sending a link to it to the respondents’ phone numbers. The confidence interval was 95%, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.