Conservative atheists not rare in South Korea?

In a few days South Korea will have a new president, and this is very important because of how large North Korea looms in geopolitics. An interesting aspect of this race for Americans is that the candidate of the conservative party, Park Geun-Hye, may be an atheist, running against a Roman Catholic liberal. I say may be because there are some confusions over Park Geun-Hye’s religious identity. Her parents were Buddhist, she was baptized as a young woman as a Roman Catholic, and seems to have drawn without much discrimination from a variety of religious teachings to inform her world-view. It wouldn’t be shocking if Park Geun-Hye was an atheist. According to the World Values Survey ~25% of South Koreans are convinced atheists.

I was curious if atheists in South Korea leaned to the Left or the Right, and from what I can tell there’s no strong correlation. This may surprise Americans, but the historical experience of the two nations is very different. Until recently South Korea has had weak institutional religions, and a substantial portion of what we might term “progressives” were Christians, in particular Roman Catholics. Below are the results for the USA, Great Britain, Sweden, and South Korea for the World Values Survey using religious identification and political self positioning. Percentages and sample sizes are included.

 

		N	Religious person	Not religious person	Convinced atheist
Great Britain		854	49.90%	39.10%	11.10%
	Left	30	40.00%	36.80%	23.20%
	2	24	39.60%	36.40%	23.90%
	3	70	40.30%	34.60%	25.10%
	4	78	41.20%	48.70%	10.10%
	5	340	50.20%	42.20%	7.60%
	6	129	56.30%	38.30%	5.40%
	7	80	48.40%	43.90%	7.60%
	8	56	55.50%	28.40%	16.10%
	9	23	59.70%	18.60%	21.70%
	Right	24	70.80%	15.80%	13.30%
United States		1175	71.80%	24.70%	3.50%
	Left	21	51.10%	33.70%	15.20%
	2	18	67.90%	27.10%	5.00%
	3	70	50.80%	41.00%	8.20%
	4	96	62.80%	31.20%	6.00%
	5	418	72.30%	26.60%	1.10%
	6	233	71.10%	25.80%	3.10%
	7	130	77.00%	16.90%	6.10%
	8	104	82.90%	11.70%	5.40%
	9	43	97.50%	2.50%	–
	Right	43	69.00%	31.00%	–
Sweden		953	33.10%	49.70%	17.20%
	Left	26	25.70%	49.20%	25.10%
	2	36	26.80%	36.40%	36.70%
	3	137	28.40%	54.10%	17.60%
	4	132	27.30%	51.80%	20.90%
	5	139	32.70%	51.20%	16.00%
	6	109	42.50%	47.80%	9.60%
	7	156	32.70%	49.00%	18.30%
	8	149	32.50%	53.20%	14.30%
	9	41	48.70%	39.50%	11.80%
	Right	29	45.90%	37.50%	16.60%
South Korea		1195	30.10%	41.40%	28.60%
	Left	18	17.00%	56.30%	26.70%
	2	32	28.00%	31.70%	40.30%
	3	148	41.70%	30.00%	28.30%
	4	145	34.60%	37.20%	28.20%
	5	245	22.10%	50.10%	27.90%
	6	142	30.20%	40.20%	29.60%
	7	169	26.00%	38.20%	35.80%
	8	182	36.80%	39.80%	23.40%
	9	62	27.20%	51.90%	20.90%
	Right	54	20.40%	51.20%	28.30%