hankyoreh

A gay pride festival in front of Seoul City Hall in July 2017. (Yonhap News)

The percentage of South Koreans who consider themselves conservative increased considerably last year, accompanied by a corresponding decrease in those who regard themselves as progressive, a new study finds.

According to a fact-finding study about social integration that was released by the Korea Institute of Public Administration on Feb. 20, the percentage of respondents who identified themselves as having a conservative orientation rose from 21.2% in 2018 to 24.7% in 2019, up 3.5 percentage points. In contrast, the percentage of those who reported a progressive orientation was found to decrease from 31.4% to 28%, down 3.4 percentage points, during the same period. This reversed a trend of more self-identifying progressives and fewer self-identifying conservatives since the study was first held in 2013.

Changes in ideological orientation tracked a shift in attitudes toward minorities. Exclusionary attitudes toward social minorities — including homosexuals, North Korean defectors, and people with disabilities — increased sharply last year. In 2018, 49% of respondents were unwilling to tolerate homosexuals, but last year, that percentage increased to 57.1%. During the same period, the percentage of respondents who were unwilling to tolerate people born in North Korea more than doubled, from 12.6% to 25.5%. There was also a major jump in the percentage of respondents unwilling to tolerate people with disabilities, from 1.3% to 5.1%, over the same period.

When asked about which institutions they trusted the most, respondents chose hospitals, followed by schools, banks, local governments, and the military. The least trusted institution was the National Assembly, followed by the prosecutors, the courts, newspapers, and the police.

This survey was carried out by Hankook Research, a polling organization, on behalf of the Korea Institute of Public administration between September and October of last year. The poll surveyed 8,000 South Korean nationals, with a reliability of 95% and a ±1.84 point margin of error.

By Kim Kyu-won, staff reporter

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