How would the South Korean public react to a U.S.-China conflict in the Taiwan Strait? It is widely assumed that the Republic of Korea (hereafter ROK or South Korea), regardless of the ideological orientation of the government, would be cautious about becoming involved in supporting the United States in a Taiwan Strait conflict due to the immediate threat posed by North Korea as well as fears of antagonizing China. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of the South Korean public want to support the United States and Taiwan in some form, including 40% willing to send non-military assistance to Taiwan, 15% willing to provide rear-area military support to U.S. forces, 14% supporting a role for U.S. forces based in Korea, and 3% supporting direct military intervention. Only 20% of the public prefer to stay uninvolved. To what extent is the South Korean public an outlier among U.S. allies in this heterogeneity of views, and how much elasticity is there in these positions?

This Asan Issue Brief examines how the South Korean public views a potential Taiwan contingency, drawing on the 2024-2026 Asan Polls alongside other survey data. The Issue Brief proceeds as follows. First, it discusses ROK government caution towards a potential U.S.-China conflict in defense of Taiwan. Second, it examines cross-national survey data to show that the South Korean public’s views are generally aligned with U.S. allied publics in the Indo-Pacific and Europe and actually more hawkish according to some polls. Third, it analyzes earlier surveys that found 20-35% South Korean support for sending troops to Taiwan in a conflict and suggests that these results inflated military resolve due to binary response options. We instead used an ordinal scale of response options that produced a more heterogeneous distribution of views, but we notably found that support for direct military intervention was, in fact, almost negligible at 3%. Fourth, we used the threat of Chinese retaliation as a conditioning cue to test public resolve and found that 32% of respondents changed their response, but most shifted to the median options rather than toward neutrality or direct intervention.

Fifth, the Issue Brief introduces an alternative hypothesis for how ‘national interest’ framing in survey questioning might move South Korean public opinion towards a Taiwan contingency. Looking at comparable episodes of U.S. burden-sharing pressure for the ROK to join coalition military deployments during the 2003 Iraq War and 2026 Iran War, we argue that public support for stronger intervention options can shift depending on how leaders and surveys frame potential deployments. This suggests that explaining to the public the direct and vital national interests that South Korea has in upholding peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is more important than focusing on alliance burden-sharing.

The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.