Stability and change in Korean values

Dramatic changes have taken place in socio-political value orientations in Korea throughout the post-World War II period, primarily as a function of intergenerational change and rising levels of education. This article, by using the three waves of the World Values Surveys conducted between 1982-1996, investigates the changing patterns of basic social values, and analyzes the relationship between these values and their effects on mass political orientations in Korea. The findings indicate that social values have played an important, if not crucial, role in shifting mass political attitudes, and in enhancing the propensity to engage in political action between 1982-1996. What we learned is that Authoritarian-Libertarian (A-L) values have sharply partitioned Korean society largely along the lines of age and education, the latter becoming more important in the later period. It was also shown that the differences in the A-L values are strongly related to contrasting protest potential.