Have Koreans stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb?


                                       South Korea's Hyunmoo 2 missile. 

What’s this? A piece in English on Korean public opinion that is good! Please read it because this kind of behaviour needs encouraging.

They find the attempts at a peace process are very popular though most South Koreans are sceptical that it will lead to North Korea giving up the bomb in line with other polling on the issue.

It also provides yet another solid rejection of the idea South Koreans oppose the US-Korea alliance.  63% of South Koreans think something related to the US is the main reason the North has not launched a large scale stack on the South in the last 10 years (36% say the US-Korea alliance, 20% US troops being in South Korea,  7% the US nuclear umbrella.).

The main bit of this post was going to add some caveats to the finding that South Koreans want nukes (albeit slightly less so than in the past). Luckily one of the authors of the piece has already done that on twitter but I’ve kept the title anyway.

On the more day to day stuff Moon’s approval ratings have seemingly stopped dropping.

Gallup has Moon on 47% ‘doing well’ and 43% ‘not doing well.’
Real Metre has Moon on 49% ‘approve’ and 46% ‘disapprove’

Moon’s approval ratings were ridiculously high from March-June 2018 (in the 70s and 80s) they then dropped quite rapidly to the low 50s by September before going back up to the mid 60s after the 2nd inter-Korean summit in September and have gradually decreased since then. They seem to have settled with him having the support of roughly half of people in South Korea. Compared to past presidents at this point in their terms Moon is very popular. Depending how you look at it he is either the most popular president since Korea became a democracy (in 1987) 18-19 months into his term or the 2nd most popular (after Kim Dae-jung). The constant theme of Moon’s ‘plummeting’ approval ratings that has been everywhere in Korean and western coverage, while technically true, has been missing this historical context.

Considering South Korean presidents can’t run for re-election and the next election is a parliamentary one party political polling is probably more important anyway. Again this all looks pretty steady with big Democrat leads.

Gallup- Democrats 40%, Free Korea 16%, Righteous Future 8%, Justice 8%

Real Metre- Democrats 40%, Free Korea 24%, Justice 8%, Righteous Future 6%, Democracy and Peace 3%

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