Date

January 9, 2014

Page

1

Contact

(Ms.)Heesun Kim

Office

02-3701-7387

E-mail

communications@asaninst.org

* For Immediate Release

Public Opinion on Japan Following Abe’s Yasukuni Visit

The Public Opinion Studies Center (Director Kim Jiyoon) conducted an opinion survey (Dec. 29-31) on attitudes toward Japan after Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Yasukuni.

86.9% of the Korean public identifies Korea-Japan relations as “bad”. There was relatively little variation across age cohort or political ideology.

A slim majority (55.7%) expected relations to further deteriorate in the future.

87.6% disapproved of Mr. Abe’s Yasukuni visit.

However, if relations are to improve, a majority (57.8%) state that President Park Geun-Hye should play a leading role in doing so. Despite the poor relations between the countries, a near majority (49.5%) still support a Korea-Japan summit. When this question was asked in early September 2013, support for such a summit was 58.1%.

Should China continues its rise, nearly two-thirds (63.9%) state that security cooperation with Japan will be a necessity. A clear majority of all age cohorts agreed.

The Dokdo issue (42.1%) was seen as the most important issue effecting Korea-Japan relations. Japan’s distortion of history (32.9%) was second. The enforced sexual slavery issue was third with 13.8%.

A slim majority (50.7%) continued to see the signing of GSOMIA as a necessity. However, this was a 9.7pp decrease from when this question was asked in September.

74.5% stated that Korea should cooperate with China to solve historical issues with Japan.

In a survey conducted from January 1-3, Prime Minister Abe shared a similar level of favorability with Kim Jong Un. While 1.2% held a favorable opinion of Mr. Abe. 1.9% stated a favorable opinion of Kim.

Methodology
The sample size of each survey was 1,000 respondents of adult male and female over the age of 19. All surveys employed the Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) and the Random Digit Dialing. Sampling method was quota sampling according to region, gender, age. The surveys were conducted by Research & Research, and the margin of error is ±3.1% at the 95% confidence level.