Centrist politics in favor among younger Koreans

The political keyword of Koreans in their 20s for year 2005 is “moderate,” a new poll by the JoongAng Ilbo and the Survey Research Center at Sungkyunkwan University suggested.
The study, the third annual polling of its kind, showed that increasing numbers of young Koreans see themselves as politically moderate. The shift in political identity toward the middle was visible in young adults across Korea’s regions and across educational levels.
The polls, conducted in 2003, 2004 and this year, each asked just over 1,000 persons about their political identity. Partly because the survey included Koreans of all ages, the results specific to Koreans in a specific age group must be interpreted with even more caution, and the researchers claimed only accuracy of plus or minus 5 percent with 95 percent confidence.
About 36 percent of Koreans in their 20s consider themselves political moderates, the new survey said. Another 35 percent called themselves liberal and 28 percent said they were conservative.
That is a marked change from surveys of the previous two years, when a large plurality of young Koreans styled themselves as liberal, and relatively few said they were centrist in their political views. The change this year was particularly marked among those in their early 20s, where the proportion of moderates jumped by 13 percentage points over that in the 2003 survey.
Over the entire adult population, Koreans who call themselves conservative still predominate. They comprise 36 percent of the population, the survey said, with 33 percent saying they were moderates and another 30 percent calling themselves liberal.
But even in the general population, moderates are increasing in number. In 2003, they were only 27 percent of Koreans; in 2004, the proportion rose to 29 percent.
Most of their gains came from dwindling ranks of conservatives, who decreased by 5 percentage points; more progressives stuck to their guns, declining in relative numbers by less than one percentage point.
The shifts in poll results correlate rather nicely with some of the political developments here over the last three years. In 2005, the furor over the proposed abolition of Korea’s tough anti-communist law and outspoken advocacy of North Korean political positions by a university professor seem to have driven some liberals here ― about 3.5 percent of the population, judging from the survey results ― toward the middle of the road.
A year earlier, it was the conservatives’ turn to lose ground after many Koreans judged that the effort to remove President Roh Moo-hyun from office was misguided. About 4.3 percent of Koreans moved closer to the center from the right wing then.
“The spread of moderate politics, with those in their 20s in the center, reflects the current of our era ― to avoid the extreme and to accept reality with pragmatic approaches,” said Seok Hyun-ho, a sociology professor at Sungkyunkwan University and head of the Survey Research Center there. He said the shift was gradual and predicted that it would continue.
Moderate voices are rising in the Jeolla provinces and in Seoul, long hotbeds of liberal political thinking, but again, the shift has been gradual. And when the results are broken down by education levels, the same gradual trend away from the right and left wings toward the center is visible.
Translated into political support, the center-left Uri Party last year was supported by 35 percent of those in their 20s, while the conservative Grand National Party was favored by only about 17 percent of those young adults. That changed dramatically this year; across that age group, the Grand National Party now claims a higher proportion of support than Uri.
Koreans in their 30s have stayed with Uri, however, the only age group that still gives the administration’s party a plurality of support.
Finally, more Koreans say they support no political party or did not answer questions about their choice of party. That proportion rose to 25 percent, up from 15 percent last year.

by Special Reporting Team