Koreans are growing much less fond of China

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South Koreans harbor overwhelmingly negative opinions of China amid simmering tensions over South Korea's participation in a U.S.-led antimissile system, according to a JoongAng Ilbo survey released ahead of the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Seoul and Beijing.

The proportion of South Koreans who view China positively fell from 22.2 percent in 2019 to 11.8 percent this year, while those with negative impressions mounted from 51.5 percent in 2019 to 70.3 percent this year, according to the survey.

The poll, which was jointly commissioned by the JoongAng Ilbo and the Seoul-based East Asia Institute (EAI), was conducted by Hankook Research and questioned 1,028 adults between July 21 and Aug. 8. It has a confidence interval of 95 percent with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Reasons given by respondents for disliking their powerful neighbor varied, but several were linked to China’s growing assertiveness and willingness to exert economic pressure on South Korea to prevent it from being drawn into a U.S.-led bloc of countries to encircle it militarily and exclude it technologically — even as Seoul has insisted its cooperation with the United States on antimissile defense and semiconductor supply chains is a matter of sovereignty and national interest rather than a confrontation of China.

Among those who said they disliked China in the EAI survey, the largest proportion — 31.5 percent — said that their negative impression of China was influenced by the country’s use of coercive policies against South Korea.

Those policies include unofficial punitive measures Beijing enacted against South Korean businesses present in China in 2016, when the conservative Park Geun-hye administration greenlit the deployment of the U.S. military’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) anti-missile defense system in Seongju, North Gyeongsang in response to North Korea’s advancing missile development program.

Beijing’s displeasure with the Thaad deployment was papered over by promises by the previous Moon Jae-in administration in October 2017 that Seoul would not allow additional Thaad batteries, participate in an American missile defense network or transform the U.S.-South Korea-Japan alliance into a military alliance — the so-called “Three No’s” policy.

Yet the issue of Thaad’s deployment on South Korean soil continues to plague bilateral relations.

Although South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin told the press after an Aug. 9 meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that he relayed Seoul’s position that the “Three No’s” were neither an official pledge nor an agreement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told Seoul the next day to keep to the “Three No’s” policy anyway — as well as an additional “one restriction” on the use of the Thaad system already deployed in Korea.

Seoul, which recently participated in U.S.-led antimissile defense exercises at the biennial Pacific Dragon drill in Hawaii alongside Japan, has balked at the demand, with its foreign ministry releasing a statement on Aug. 10 saying, “Thaad is a means of self-defense to protect the lives and safety of our people from North Korean nuclear and missile threats, and it’s not a matter for discussion [with another country].”

The ministry’s statement also said, “The more China keeps mentioning the matter, the more costs it will inflict to our bilateral ties.”

Seoul’s official position appeared to be widely supported among South Koreans in a March poll by the Asan Institute, in which 71.7 percent of respondents said they supported South Korea’s participation in a U.S.-led ballistic missile defense system.

South Korea’s possible participation in a vaguely described U.S.-led semiconductor supply consultative body that also includes Japan and Taiwan may also further inflame tensions with China.

In the Aug. 9 meeting, Park told Wang that “the recent decision by Korea to join [the body] was purely and entirely based on our national interests and was not meant to exclude or target any specific country,” but Taiwan’s possible participation is likely to rankle China, which has worked hard to prevent the island’s recognition as a country on the international stage.

Tensions between the United States and China over the self-governing island, which Beijing claims as a renegade province, and other ongoing international issues were also factors in negative South Korea public opinion about China.

Twenty-three percent of EAI survey respondents cited tensions between the United States and China as a motive to dislike the latter, while 11.7 and 11.6 percent noted other sources of U.S.-China tensions — namely Chinese cooperation with Russia and Iran, and the Chinese military threat to Taiwan — as the main reasons for their negativity toward Beijing.

In case of “serious conflict” between China and the United States, 41.2 percent of EAI survey respondents said Seoul should support Washington over Beijing, while just 2.1 percent said the opposite. 56.7 percent said the country should remain neutral in such a conflict.

That result reflects increasingly positive public opinion about the role of the United States in the region compared to China.

According to the Asan Institute survey, 88.3 percent of respondents were optimistic about South Korea-U.S. relations, and said relations between the allies were characterized by trust.

The same poll showed U.S. President Biden’s average favorability among South Koreans was 5.89 out of a maximum score of 10, which was significantly higher than that of President Xi Jinping, whose average was 1.99.

Despite their negative opinion of China, however, South Koreans appear wary of further angering their powerful neighbor, with whose economy their own is closely intertwined.

According to the EAI survey, 58.4 percent of respondents said they supported keeping the currently deployed Thaad battery in Seongju, but opposed the deployment of additional Thaad batteries.

Only 16.3 percent supported additional Thaad battery installations, while an even smaller 13.5 percent said they wanted Thaad removed entirely.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]