{"id":135737,"date":"2026-08-28T18:33:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T18:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/135737\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T18:33:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T18:33:30","slug":"65-pct-of-s-koreans-support-nuclear-armament-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/135737\/","title":{"rendered":"65 pct of S. Koreans support nuclear armament: poll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Almost two-thirds of South Koreans said their country should have its own nuclear weapons, a poll showed Friday. In this February 2025 photo, South Korean troops watch a combined live-fire exercise in Pocheon. Photo by Thomas Maresca\/UPI | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/News_Photos\/lp\/84fba7bb5fc79fbcddcba220185b1c37\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">License Photo<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nearly two-thirds of South Koreans support the idea of their country having its own nuclear weapons, a poll showed Friday.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Gallup Korea poll, 65 percent agreed that South Korea should possess nuclear weapons independently, while 30 percent opposed the idea.\n<\/p>\n<p>The survey was conducted on 1,001 South Koreans aged 18 and older from Tuesday to Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>By political affiliation, the figure stood at 78 percent among supporters of the main opposition People Power Party and 60 percent among supporters of the ruling Democratic Party.<\/p>\n<p>Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they believe <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/topic\/North_Korea\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"North Korea\" class=\"tpstyle\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">North Korea<\/a> could actually start a war, while 55 percent said they did not believe the North posed such a risk.<\/p>\n<p>Among those who said there was no risk, 58 percent still supported the idea of South Korea possessing its own nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Gallup said the finding suggests that a significant number of respondents may view nuclear weapons more as a strategic or self-defensive deterrent than as weapons for actual use.<\/p>\n<p>On the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) of troops from Washington, 46 percent replied it should be completed during President Lee Jae Myung&#8217;s term that ends in 2030, while 41 percent said the transfer should be postponed.\n<\/p>\n<p>Lee has vowed to regain OPCON from the U.S. before his term ends.<\/p>\n<p>The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright (c) Yonhap News Agency prohibits its content from being redistributed or reprinted without consent, and forbids the content from being learned and used by artificial intelligence systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost two-thirds of South Koreans said their country should have its own nuclear weapons, a poll showed Friday.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1672,31,34,33,206,207],"class_list":["post-135737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-defense","tag-korea","tag-north-korea","tag-south-korea","tag-top-news","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}