More than 65 percent of South Koreans say they prefer Joe Biden over Donald Trump as the president of the United States, a survey showed on Tuesday.
According to a poll conducted by the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, and the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun, 65.7 percent of South Korean respondents said President Biden's victory in the forthcoming presidential election, scheduled for Nov. 5, would be more desirable.
Only 20.1 percent of them picked Trump, a GOP presidential candidate seeking to regain the White House after his loss in the previous election to Biden.
Asked the same question, 60 percent of Japanese respondents said they prefer Biden, while 23 percent picked Trump.
The results suggest their shared anxiety about Trump's renewed isolationism, symbolized by his “America First” slogan, as citizens of the two U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region.
This comes as more South Koreans believe geopolitical risks have been rising in recent years. Asked which countries out of the U.S., China, Russia, Japan and North Korea pose a military risk to South Korea (a question to which multiple choices were allowed), 80.1 percent picked North Korea, followed by China (61.4 percent), Russia (51.7 percent), Japan (29.7 percent) and the U.S. (13.6 percent).
In a survey conducted the previous year, 69.6 percent of South Koreans picked North Korea, while 42.5 percent selected Russia.