Proximity, contact and tolerance of homosexuals in Korea: evidence from an experimental survey

ABSTRACT

Compared to most developed democracies, South Korea lags behind in terms of LGBT tolerance. This analysis suggests that relational proximity and knowing a Korean LGBT person influence this tolerance. Through an experimental web survey design, results show that the closer the relational proximity (coworker versus friend versus family member), the less one stated their comfort with being around a homosexual. The same pattern endures among those who knew a South Korean LGBT person, although rates of acceptance were much higher. In addition, this analysis finds of South Korea’s three main religions, only Protestant identification corresponded with a statistically significant decline in tolerance.

KEYWORDS:

• South Korea
• tolerance
• homosexual
• survey
• experiment
• relational proximity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Timothy S. Rich is an associate professor of political science at Western Kentucky University and director of the International Public Opinion Lab (IPOL). His research focuses on public opinion and electoral politics, with a focus on East Asian democracies.

Isabel Eliassen is an Honors undergraduate researcher at Western Kentucky University majoring in International Affairs, Chinese, and Linguistics.

Notes

1 The South Korean military, for example, still punishes same-sex activities despite their broadly legality (see Na et al., 2014).

2 For example, Lin et al. (2016) found that Chinese college students who had increased media exposure to homosexuals had a more positive view of them. Kim and Wojcieszak (2018) also found positive effects on tolerance from interacting with homosexuals through online commenting.

3 Each province and major city are represented, with Seoul comprising 22.33% of respondents and the outlying Gyeonggi province another 22.06%.

4 Respondents claiming a religious affiliation other than the three named comprised 1.22% of respondents.

5 One question not asked on the survey which admittedly likely influences comfort levels is whether the respondent themselves identify as LGBT.

6 For example, only 5.36 percent of Protestants surveyed here said they knew a Korean LGBT, compared to 8.55 percent for Buddhists and 941 percent for Catholics.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Korean Studies [Grant Number AKS-2018-R05].