Nearly half of all Koreans support attack on AmCham office: survey
3-5-02--Seoul--Several new opinion surveys recently conducted in South Korea reveal a sharp rise in anti-American sentiment, including widespread support for a recent terrorist attack by a radical student group on the offices of the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul.
Some 47.1 percent of Koreans support the occupation and trashing of the offices of the American Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 20 by Hanchongnyeon, a radical student group, according to a poll conducted by Sisa Journal, a leading weekly news magazine.
The survey also revealed that 56.1 percent of Koreans have felt a significant rise in Anti-American feelings this year.
When asked who they would root for in a soccer game between Japan and the U.S., 29 percent said they would be cheering for Japan, while only 23.9 said they would be pulling for the Americans. (However, 47.1 percent said they would not care who won.)
According to the survey, which appears in the magazine's March 7 issue, 71.4 percent of Koreans oppose the U.S. expanding the war on terrorism and 76.4 percent oppose the construction of any new apartments on the U.S. army base at Yongsan.
The survey comes on the heels of a recent Gallup poll which found that 59.6 percent of Koreans say they don't like the U.S. as opposed to 33.7 percent who said they liked Amercia.
The Gallup polled revealed that Koreans with a college education were far more likely to dislike America (71.6 percent) than those with only a high school education (48 percent).
