The Korea Herald

피터빈트

73% of S. Koreans positive about Biden-Kim summit: poll

By Yonhap

Published : Dec. 23, 2020 - 12:08

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President-elect Joe Biden removes his face mask as he arrives to introduce his nominees and appointees to key national security and foreign policy posts at The Queen theater on Nov. 24, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP-Yonhap) President-elect Joe Biden removes his face mask as he arrives to introduce his nominees and appointees to key national security and foreign policy posts at The Queen theater on Nov. 24, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP-Yonhap)
About 73 percent of South Koreans are positive about incoming US President Joe Biden holding a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un either unconditionally or in case of real progress in nuclear negotiations, a survey showed Wednesday.

According to the poll conducted by the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), 20.1 percent said that Biden should hold talks with Kim "unconditionally," while 52.9 percent responded that they should meet if real progress is made in the North Korean nuclear standoff.

The survey of 1,005 South Korean adults also found that 38 percent of the respondents said South Korea-US relations worsened in the past year, while only 7.4 percent said the relations improved during this period.

Among the respondents that said the relations worsened, 50.3 percent said the US was responsible for the deterioration. KINU cited the breakdown of the Hanoi summit in February 2019 between President Donald Trump and Kim as one of the factors that could have affected the results.

Of those polled, 57.4 percent of the respondents said they supported Biden as the US president, while 8.7 percent replied they favored Trump.

The survey, conducted from Nov. 10 to Dec. 3, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. (Yonhap)