1946년 미군정의 여론조사에 나타난 한국인의 사회인식

Abstract

This paper studies the social attitudes of South Koreans indicated through an opinion poll conducted by the American Military Government in Korea (AMGIK) in 1946. Some scholars criticized that this poll was politically biased due to AMGIK’s perceived, right-wing tendencies at the time. However, the AMGIK actually held a middle way supporting for coalition of the lefts and the rights, and were weary of extreme right-wing tendencies. Nonetheless, the public opinion at the time was predominantly right-wing, especially in Seoul. About 70 percent of South Koreans in the polls supported rightists or right-wing parties; a large majority opposed Trusteeship and people’s democracy and preferred to a representative democracy and separation of legal, administrative, and judicial powers. In particular, the opinion polls indicated that the public strongly opposed the Soviet’s disposition to exclude Rhee Syungman and Kim Ku from the US-USSR Joint Commission. In light of this, it can be said that the political orientation of South Koreans immediately after its liberation was right leaning—as in, oriented towards a Western democracy. However, the polls indicated that South Koreans' economic preferences were strongly against both extreme communism and extreme capitalism. South Koreans clearly did not support North Korea’s land reform in the polls. With respect of Japan’s companies, the public opinions favored nationalization of them; but with respect to Japanese’ lands, public opinion viewed nationalization as well as privatization of them. With respect of farm land of South Korean large land owner, there was much support for selling confiscation and selling distribution. So, in economy policy, public opinions resembled a moderate European social democracy.