A recent survey showed that the Korean people’s anti-communism has decreased while anti-Americanism has notably increased. Prof. Koh Sang-doo of Yonsei University cited the joint questionnaire report on Korea’s policy toward North Korea and the U.S., which is produced by Research & Research and Gallup Korea in coming up with the above analysis. In 2004, Research & Research carried out a survey to find out which country is the key enemy of Korea. And according to Koh, people aged between 20s to 40s picked the U.S. (57.9 percent in their 20s, 46.8 percent in their 30s and 36.3 percent in their 40s) as Korea’s biggest enemy, but people over 50 said North Korea (52.5 percent) is the key enemy.
All generations agreed that National Security Law must be reformed (72.4 percent in their 20s to 30s, 70.2 percent in their 40s and 49.8 percent in those over 50s). In addition, Gallup Korea ran a survey in 2001 and 2003 to investigate what people thought about the possibility of North Korea invading the South, and that there was no big change in the reply for people over the age of 30 (30.6 percent to 31.1 percent in their 30s, 32.6 percent to 32.0 percent in their 40s and 26.8 percent to 30.5 percent in those over 50), but there was a significant decrease in younger generations (52.3 percent to 30.9 percent in their 20s). "The Korean people’s structure of consciousness has become very flexible so that it cannot be identified with the concept of anti-communism and many Koreans treat the U.S. as the number one enemy, which tells us that anti-Americanism is notably increasing," added Prof. Koh. |