SEOUL: South Koreans’ opinion of the United States has fallen to its lowest level in more than two decades, according to a survey released on Aug 24 by the US-based Pew Research Center.
Some 55 per cent of South Koreans surveyed expressed an unfavourable view of the US, a marked spike from 39 per cent in 2025.
Despite the increase in South Koreans’ negative views of the US, they still see America as an important security ally in the face of the nuclear threat from North Korea.
The US-based non-profit research and polling organisation had surveyed 1,045 South Koreans from March 3 to April 4, as part of its broader Global Attitudes Survey covering 36 countries, including Japan, Singapore and Germany.
While South Koreans’ favourable views of the US notched a historic fall to 45 per cent, the shift is broadly in line with a deterioration in attitudes towards the US globally, alongside improving views of China.
For the first time, China was viewed more favourably than the US in the Pew survey, with respondents in 25 of the 36 countries giving China a higher rating.
South Korea, despite the sharp drop in favourable views of the US, remains among the six countries where the US is viewed more positively than China, alongside fellow US allies Japan, the Philippines, Poland and Israel, as well as close US partner India.
The low favourability towards the US among South Koreans comes amid a testy period in the two allies’ bilateral relationship, which has repeatedly hit speed bumps since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.
Trump revived complaints from his first term that Seoul was not paying enough for the US military presence on the Korean peninsula. Tensions later escalated after a September 2025 immigration raid at a Hyundai-linked factory in the US state of Georgia resulted in the detention of hundreds of South Korean workers.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration over Seoul’s pace in fulfilling its US$350 billion investment pledge under a tariff deal reached in November 2025, as well as irritation over what he said was South Korea’s failure to “help” with his Iran campaign, the US-Israel war against the Middle Eastern state.
Trump’s latest salvo came on Aug 17, when he ordered the Pentagon to substantially reduce US-South Korea joint military drills that were due to begin that day. In a Truth Social post, he described the exercises as “not only costly” but also a “totally inappropriate and hostile” signal to an “unthreatening and respectful” North Korea.
The Pew survey, conducted months before Trump’s latest decision to scale back the drills, showed that 85 per cent of South Koreans surveyed disapproved of the way he was handling tariffs.
About three-quarters of the respondents also disapproved of the way Trump was dealing with Iran.
There were two other points in the past two decades when South Koreans’ unfavourable views of the US saw sharp spikes.
The most recent was in 2020, during Trump’s first term, when he demanded a roughly 500 per cent increase in Seoul’s contribution towards the cost of maintaining the 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea.
Amid threats to withdraw the US troops if Seoul did not meet his demands, about 4,000 South Korean civilian workers at US military bases were furloughed for roughly two and a half months during the impasse.
The other nadir came in November 2002, when public outrage erupted after a US military court acquitted two US servicemen whose armoured vehicle had struck and killed two 14-year-old schoolgirls in Yangju city.
Based on Pew’s historical data, the 2020 fall-out saw unfavourability hitting 39 per cent while the 2002 incident’s aftermath saw the unfavourability rating rise to 50 per cent in 2003.
James Kim, director of the Korea Program at the Stimson Center, a think-tank in Washington, told The Straits Times that the results of the survey was not surprising given how there had been so many changes in the bilateral relations since early 2025.
The sharp decline in South Koreans’ favourable views of the US “cannot be placed on just any one event”, said Kim.
“It has to be an accumulation of all of these matters over time that would change the minds of broad swathes of people,” he said.
South Korean David Shin, who had worked for three years in the US in the 2000s, told ST that he believed that South Koreans’ opinion has shifted because “America today is not the same America as before”.
The 49-year-old, who works in the finance industry, said that while he does not blame the US for prioritising its own national interest, it is a reality that the US’ handling of its relationships and partnerships has become far more transactional and calculated.
He said that he did not equate Trump with the US as a whole because there were many Americans who held serious concerns about his policies.
However, he added: “The American society has, to some extent, absorbed and normalised elements of his world view, and the country has already moved considerably further towards America First and a more explicitly national-interest-driven approach.”
Still, like Shin, while many South Koreans may now hold a less favourable view of the US, a majority – 84 per cent – still regard it as their country’s most important ally.
Analyst Kim says this suggests that South Koreans still understand, “albeit likely begrudgingly”, the strategic importance of the US as an ally and a guarantor of extended deterrence against the North Korean nuclear threat.
“But it is like how people’s personal feelings towards someone versus the professional or working relationship with that person, it can be two different things. It goes to show that the South Korean public appears to understand this,” said Kim.
Terry Choi, 45, a South Korean who had lived in various parts of the US from 2007 to 2017, believes that South Korea, for its part, needs to understand the US’ perspective and national interest behind its policies, so that it can better figure out “how to navigate this new geopolitical and economic environment strategically”.
She believes the current Korean government is doing a poor job of analysing and responding to the changes, whether it be tariffs, the emerging international order or the war against Iran.
Regarding her country’s response, she said: “South Korea is now one of the world’s developed democracies, and I think we need to think much more seriously about what responsibilities come with that position.” - The Straits Times/ANN
