ADRN

The East Asia Institute in Korea and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released yesterday a survey of attitudes in several East Asian countries, concentrating on the emergence of two new economic powerhouses in the region, China and India.

But the survey, conducted in July in those two countries and in South Korea, Indonesia, Japan and the United States, also suggested that South Koreans still have a chip on their collective shoulder about their treatment by other nations.

About 70 percent of the Koreans surveyed said they had not been treated appropriately by the international community. Eighty-one percent said Korea needed a strong military to survive; 64 percent favored the development of nuclear arms here.

The survey, the second of its kind, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points with 95-percent confidence in the results.

Chinese respondents had the most favorable sentiment toward Korea among the nationalities surveyed, followed in order by Australians, Indians and Americans.

That low U.S. esteem apparently was not the result of confusion about which Korea is which; the institutes said the Americans surveyed showed a reasonable degree of sophistication about Asian affairs, in marked contrast with respondents in Indonesia.

About half the Americans rated U.S.-Korea ties as unchanged over the past few years; a quarter said they were worsening and only 15 percent said ties were getting better.

Americans also split down the middle in rating Korea as a "fair" or "unfair" trader.

The results in China were strikingly different. More than half the Chinese polled said ties with South Korea were improving. Two-thirds said South Korea was a fair trader with China, and the same proportion said they favored a free trade agreement with South Korea. A majority said the United States and Japan both dealt unfairly in trade with China.

About 82 percent of the Koreans surveyed said they wanted U.S. military intervention should the North attack the South. About 47 percent said they supported U.S. intervention should China attack Taiwan.

Only 2 percent of the Koreans polled said U.S. troops should leave the peninsula immediately; 49 percent said the number should be reduced gradually.