hankyoreh

South Koreans are split over whether they want politicians to focus on stability or restraining government power as they gear up to go to the polls on April 9 for a vote to determine who will win control of the National Assembly for the next four years, a recent opinion poll showed. A majority of survey respondents said they would support candidates from the president-elect’s Grand National Party, though the policies of the president-elect’s transition team have drawn a considerable amount of fire since the team began its work earlier this year.

The poll, conducted by The Hankyoreh and Research Plus on February 2, showed that 48.5 percent of respondents said they wanted “candidates from the GNP to be elected to stabilize national policy operations,” while 43.4 percent said they hoped that “more opposition candidates would be elected to keep the president and the ruling party in check.” The survey showed that opinions are evenly divided, with a split between the GNP’s emphasis on stability and the opposition parties’ plea for checks on government power.

However, when asked which party they will support in the upcoming parliamentary election, 49.8 percent said they would support the GNP, while 10.7 percent chose the United New Democratic Party. That was followed by the Democratic Labor Party with 4.6 percent, the Creative Korea Party with 2.6 percent, the Liberty Forward Party with 2.4 percent and the Democratic Party with 1.9 percent. The results demonstrate that voters still think the liberal parties cannot be trusted, despite wanting to support some of the ideas they represent.

The percentage of respondents who want their incumbent lawmakers to be voted out of office was higher than that of those who do not. The poll showed that 40.6 percent of respondents said they wanted the lawmakers in their constituencies to change, while 30.3 percent said they would continue to support incumbent candidates. The average approval rating for GNP lawmakers was 38.8 percent, compared with the 27 percent won by lawmakers from the UNDP.

When asked about the presidential transition team’s plans for government reorganization and its three-step plan to give more autonomy to universities in how entrance exams are conducted, 59.5 percent and 60.8 percent, respectively, were in support of the plans, while a respective 32.1 percent and 26.8 percent were opposed. With regard to the president-elect’s pledge to build a cross-country canal connecting Seoul and Busan, however, 51.6 percent of respondents were opposed, while 35.3 percent said they would support the plan.

Regarding the transition team’s plan to expand English-language education in the public schools, 51.2 percent of respondents said they would support it, while 44.9 percent were opposed. However the percentage of those who anticipate that the financial burden for private tutoring will increase after the plan is implemented was far higher than that of those who expect the burden to decrease. The poll showed that 64.2 percent of respondents think their financial burden will be higher after the implementation of the plan, while 14.2 percent say the burden will be lower.

The poll surveyed 1,000 people over the age of 19 via telephone, with a response rate of 14.3 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The full results of the survey are available at www.hani.co.kr.
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