S. Korea’s Favorables Hold Steady

South Korea’s “Ally” Rating with the American people remains mostly unchanged since 2002, the first year in which Harris Surveys started collecting these numbers:

The U.K. was America’s best friend in the eyes of respondents, with 76 percent designating it a close ally, while 18 percent saw it as friendly, and 1 percent with long memories considered it hostile. It was followed by Canada and Australia, which were seen as allies by 48 percent and 43 percent. Israel came fourth with 41 percent, Japan fifth with 30 percent, Mexico sixth with 27 percent, and Italy seventh with 26 percent. South Korea garnered 25 percent, coming eighth. Germany, Sweden and Spain rounded out the top 11, and the Netherlands and Taiwan were tied for 12th with 21 percent. China came last, with only 5 percent of respondents classifying it as a friendly nation and 53 percent rating it as a hostile.

Apart from the 25 percent of Americans who see South Korea as a close ally, 31 percent considered it friendly, 20 percent not friendly but not an enemy, and 14 percent hostile. The remainder offered no opinion on the matter. That represented no great change since 2002, the first year Korea was included in the Harris poll, when Korea was seen as a close ally with 21 percent. The figure rose to 25 percent the following year and remained steady, placing the country eighth or ninth.

Neither has the proportion who saw South Korea as unfriendly or worse changed significantly, with Korea coming sixth after China, Pakistan, France, Colombia, and Russia.

Some interesting points from that last paragraph: first, one may be tempted to wonder how many Americans know much about Korea, but certainly far more Americans have been in Korea or know someone who has than know much about Pakistan or Colombia. More significantly, Korea is very low on the charts when compared to other nations where the U.S. has significant military commitments.

You can see more of the results tabulated here. The obvious missing piece is the numbers before 2002, which was when South Korean anti-Americanism first hit the U.S. airwaves. If, as I would presume, Korea’s numbers fell sharply that year, they haven’t recovered much. That would comport with France’s numbers, which went from “close ally” numbers in the 40’s before Iraq to 13% afterward. Since then, they have only budged upward two points.