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Poll Shows 65 Percent of South Koreans Support Nuclear Armament

evening · · thread: North Korea Condemns NATO Fuel Network Modernization as War Preparation

3 sources across 3 countries · Japan · South Korea · United States · 1 of them is linked to a state

Who reported this

  • Kyodo News Japan · Centre · Non-profit publisher cooperative
  • Yonhap South Korea · Centre · State-affiliated · Cooperative; statutory national agency with state subsidy
  • Bloomberg United States · Centre · Bloomberg L.P. (Michael Bloomberg)

What the colours mean

  • Left
  • Centre-left
  • Centre
  • Centre-right
  • Right
  • A hatched block means the outlet is affiliated with, or controlled by, a state.

Political lean describes where an outlet sits within the politics of its own country. It is never a position on a single global scale.

Political lean is comparable inside one country and not across them, which is why the bar groups by country first. Publicly funded broadcasters are not marked as state-linked.

The owner of each outlet is listed as a matter of record, not as a judgement about the outlet.

Every outlet covering this story shares the same political lean; read with that in mind.

A Gallup Korea poll released Friday shows that 65 percent of South Koreans support the idea of their country possessing its own nuclear weapons, while 30 percent oppose the move. The survey was conducted from Tuesday to Thursday among 1,001 South Koreans aged 18 and older, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.

Support for nuclear armament spanned political lines, with 78 percent of supporters of the main opposition People Power Party and 60 percent of supporters of the ruling Democratic Party agreeing with the measure. Gallup noted that the findings suggest many respondents view nuclear weapons as a strategic or self defensive deterrent rather than as weapons for actual use. This is reflected in the data showing that 58 percent of respondents who do not believe North Korea poses a risk of starting a war still support possessing nuclear weapons. Thirty nine percent of all respondents believe North Korea could actually start a war, while 55 percent do not believe the North poses such a risk.

The poll also addressed the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) of troops from Washington. Forty six percent of respondents believe the transfer should be completed during President Lee Jae Myung's term, which ends in 2030, while 41 percent believe it should be postponed. President Lee has vowed to regain OPCON from the U.S. before his term ends.

How each side framed it

Centre
Outlets with a center lean reported the poll results as a general measure of public sentiment, though one center lean source framed the desire for nuclear arms as a reaction to the reliability of U.S. security guarantees under President Trump.

Sources

100% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.