Over Half of the Public Say "The ROK-US Alliance Must Continue to Strengthen"

"91.6% Say 'Korea-US Alliance is Important'
Top Reason for Strengthening: 'Helps Economic Growth' 44.2%"

More than half of the nation's population believes that the South Korea-U.S. alliance should continue to be strengthened.

According to the results of the "2023 Public Perception Survey on South Korea-U.S. Relations" released by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on the 25th, 91.6% of respondents thought that the South Korea-U.S. alliance is important, and a majority of 53.7% responded that the alliance should be continuously strengthened. The response rate was particularly high among people in their 20s (66.1%), 30s (65.4%), and students (70.3%). "Maintain as is" and "gradually reduce" accounted for 24.9% and 18.1%, respectively.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The most common reason for strengthening the South Korea-U.S. alliance was "help with economic growth," at 44.2%. This was followed by "strengthening national security (42.5%)," "need for scientific and technological cooperation and human exchange (10.5%)," and "various cultural exchanges and development (2.1%)."

91.5% of respondents said that the U.S. would support South Korea in case of an emergency. Similarly, 92.4% responded that South Korea should support the U.S. in such a situation. Regarding areas where the U.S. influences South Korea, "defense and security" was the most selected at 57.5%, followed by politics and diplomacy (18.9%), economy (16.1%), science and technology (2.8%), society and culture (2.4%), and education (0.7%).

Conversely, the area where South Korea influences the U.S. the most was society and culture (27.0%). This was followed by defense and security (20.8%), economy (19.0%), science and technology (12.8%), politics and diplomacy (12.2%), and education (1.6%).

Regarding the extent of the South Korea-U.S. alliance's impact on South Korea's development, 90.7% of respondents answered that it had an impact. In evaluating the current level of the South Korea-U.S. alliance, the military and security alliance (46.5%) was the most frequently cited.

This survey was conducted by the Korea Gallup Survey Research Institute through a web survey via mobile phone text messages from the 4th to the 8th of this month, targeting 1,238 adults aged 18 and over nationwide. The maximum margin of error is ±2.8 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.