Data collection and sampling

To collect data on the political culture of university in South Korea in the 1980s and today, I have primarily utilised my own survey and interview data. For this thesis, I have conducted in-depth interviews of 27 interviewees who were university students in the 1980s and 34 interviewees who are currently university students. The interviews were conducted in two rounds, in February to March 2013 and June to August 2014. The following table shows the numbers of the interviews conducted during these two periods:

Table 2. Interview Rounds

Round Periods University Students

in the 1980s

University Students Today

1 February – March 2013 20 27

2 June – August 2014 7 7

The first round of interviews conducted in February to March 2013 were all face-to- face interviews of approximately one hour each. The second round of interviews conducted in June to August 2014 were all telephone interviews of approximately one hour each. All interviews were semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions aimed at trying to allow as much freedom in the responses as possible. Although different sets of interview questions were used for the two groups, each interviewee in the same group were asked the same questions to allow for comparison. The interview guide outlining the questions that were asked is appended in Appendix I.

set of data to determine the political culture of university students today, a survey would be needed. So in December 2013 to January 2014, an online survey was conducted with the questions formulated around the key findings through the interviews. There were a total of 199 respondents to the survey. The survey questionnaire is appended in Appendix II.

A survey was not carried out on university students in the 1980s. There were several reasons for this decision. Firstly, the attitudes and experiences of the interviewees who were university students in the 1980s were much less diverse than the attitudes and experiences of the university students today, which were more varied and nuanced. Secondly, data collection on the political culture of university students in the 1980s is inherently difficult because respondents are forced to recollect past attitudes and experiences, nearly three decades after the relevant events. It was possible to collect data despite this problem through interviews by thoroughly explaining the questions and observing the context of the answers. However, in a survey format, this is much more difficult to do. Thirdly, though this thesis seeks to compare the political culture of university students in the two different time periods, the emphasis of study is necessarily on the university students today. This is because the findings on the university students today are likely to have greater policy and theoretical implications. It was therefore decided that a survey would not be necessary for analysing the political culture of university students in the 1980s.

The target number of interviewees was 60 (30 university students in the 1980s and 30 current university students) and the target survey respondents were 250. These targets were set so that I would be able to effectively collect and analyse the data without

being overly challenged while also being able to represent regional proportions discussed further below.

I mainly used publicly available contact information and personal connections in South Korea to contact interview and survey respondents. When conducting the interviews, I focused on the following five major regional universities: Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Korea University, Pusan National University, Jeonnam University. Seoul National University, Yonsei University and Korea University are the three top universities in the Korean higher education system and are all based in Seoul. Students from these universities have historically been heavily involved in political demonstrations and rallies. Pusan National University and Jeonnam University are top regional universities in Yeongnam and Honam, respectively. Students from these universities have also historically been active in politics.

In order to find interviewees from these targeted universities, I first contacted leaders of student councils and student unions who were easier to contact. By contacting student leaders, I was able to interview students who were more likely to be interested in politics. They were also useful for being introduced other potential interviewees and contacting alumni who had attended university in the 1980s. Although I wanted to interview students in leadership positions, I also wanted to interview ordinary students who are not in leadership positions and therefore may be less interested in politics or have political ambitions. For these interviewees, I used my personal connections of people I met when I was studying in Korea, attending church or serving in the military. This mix of sources meant that there were varying levels of interest in

A key issue I had in mind when selecting interview and survey respondents was to have balanced regional representation. Regionalism is a very important social cleavage in South Korea with strong regional biases present in the party competiton structure (Kim, Y. H., 2002; Kwack, J. Y., 2006: 123; Choi, J. Y., 2007; Park, C. W., 2008). In order to ensure that the research results are not affected by regional biases, the composition of the interviewees and survey respondents were monitored to reflect actual university student numbers. As the figures below show, in South Korea, in both 1990 and 2014, around 40% of university students attended universities in the Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi region. The Yeongnam region had the next largest portion of university students at just below 30%. There was less than half the number of university students in the Honam region than in the Yeongnam region.

Table 3. Number of university students by region Region Number of university students in 1990 Percentage 1990 Number of university students in 2014 Percentage 2014 Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi 561,000 39.2% 1,131,481 38.3% Yeongnam 424,000 29.6% 790,013 26.8% Honam 196,000 13.6% 331,434 11.2% Chungcheong 176,000 12.2% 525,824 17.8% Gangwon 60,000 4.1% 138,504 4.6% Jeju 14,000 0.9% 30,239 1.0% Total: 1,431,000 - 2,947,495 -

(Source: Korea Higher Education Research Institute Statistics)

Though the sampling was not precisely in these same proportions, I made an effort to ensure that sufficient numbers of students from the Seoul, Yeongnam and Honam regions were interviewed and surveyed. In fact, the sample sizes of this study were set

so that the rough proportions of the regions could be reflected. The following table shows the list of universities attended by interviewees who were university students in the 1980s and the region of each university.

Table 4. List of universities attended by interview and survey responses

University Region

1980s Current

Interview Survey

Seoul National University Seoul 3 9 -

Yonsei University Seoul - 4 -

Korea University Seoul 2 3 -

Hanyang University Seoul 2 1 -

Kyeonghee University Seoul - 1 -

Incheon University Incheon 1 - -

Inha University Incheon 2 - -

Gyeonggi Total 10 18 139

Pusan National University Yeongnam 5 6 -

Busan University of Foreign

Studies Yeongnam - 1 -

Busan Women’s University Yeongnam 1 - -

Busan Dongyi University Yeongnam 1 - -

Gyeongbuk University Yeongnam 3 1 -

Goshin University Yeongnam 2 - -

Handong University Yeongnam - 1 -

Yeongnam Total 12 9 29

Jeonnam University Honam 2 7 -

Jeonbuk University Honam 1 - -

Josun University Honam 2 - -

Honam Total 5 7 20 Chungcheong Total - - 5 Gangwon - - 1 Other - - 5 Total 27 34 198

As for the gender of the interviewees and respondents, there were more male students who were interviewed in both the 1980s and current university student groups. The following table shows the proportions.

Table 5. Gender of interviewees and respondents

1980s Current

Interview Interview Survey

Male 22 22 88

Female 5 12 108

Percentage of Female students 18.5% 35.2% 54.2%

NA - - 3

Total 27 34 199

There are several explanations for this. For one thing, according to national statistics, there have been and still are a larger proportion of male students. In particular, in 1979, the percentage of female university students in Seoul was only 28.5%. It was therefore difficult to contact female respondents who were university students in the 1980s. The following table shows the percentages of female students in university in Seoul from 1979 to 2013.

Table 6. Percentage of female students in university in Seoul Year Percentage of female students

1979 28.5%

1990 33.2%

2000 41.6%

2010 46.2%

2013 46.8%

(Source: Korea Higher Education Research Institute Statistics)

However, these figures do not explain why for current university students, a much lower proportion of the interviewees were female but a higher proportion of the online survey respondents were female. Although I made an effort to contact female current university students for the interviews, this was harder to arrange. Although the exact

reason for this is unclear, I suspect that female students may have felt less comfortable meeting in person a male interviewer they do not know for hour-long face-to-face interviews. This explains why female students were more willing to participate on the online survey, where they could make their responses remotely. Yet, this difficulty in arranging interviews with female students may mean that the data collected for this research may lack gender representation. Given the resources, the reliability and representativeness of the data would have been improved if more female interviewees from both the 1980s and todays could have been interviewed.

The main advantage of using student union networks and personal connections at the major universities in each region of South Korea to collect data was that it had a randomising effect and a wide variety of different interviewees participated in the interviews and surveys. However, since the interview and survey participation was voluntary and the size of the sample limited, there may be reflected in the data a bias for students more likely to be interested in politics. Students who are more interested in politics are more likely in general to respond to requests to participate in an interview or survey on politics. In fact, as will be discussed further in Section III, the percentage of interviewees and respondents who said they vote is higher than the average percentage of voter participation amongst people in their 20s according to official figures. This is an inherent issue of selection bias which would have occurred even had the data collection channels were through different means, such as official university networks or media based surveys. However I made an effort to interview even students who said they were not interested in politics at all or did not participate in politics to give different perspectives.

Another data collection problem was finding university students in the 1980s who were supportive of the dictatorial Chun regime. Although it can be reasonably assumed that there would have been some students in the 1980s in favour of the Chun regime, I was not able to contact anyone who would openly admit to this and talk about it. On the other hand, it was relatively easy to contact people who were university students in the 1980s who were very willing to share their experiences as a student activist. This issue means that one limitation of this study is that in the discussion of the political culture of university students in the 1980s, the perspective of those who supported the regime were not dealt with.

One issue that became apparent only after the data analysis had been complete was that amongst the interviewees who are current university students, there were fewer student activists compared to that of interviewees who were university students in the 1980s. Although most current university student interviewees said that they voted and some interviewees had participated in candelight vigils, none of the interviewees identified themselves as being a student activist. In fact, many interviewees held negative attitudes towards student activists. There was only one interviewee who participated in politics by engaging with civil society organisations. This student participated in a campaign for expanding proportional representation in the assembly. Due to this issue, the findings in this study on the political culture of university students today may be limited to university students whose political participation is passive. Yet, this issue may also illustrate the reality of the political culture of university students today that they are less likely to resort to student activism as a mode of political participation for the various reasons that will be further explored in this thesis.

Another difficulty with the data collection methods used for this study was that limited resources meant that a wider pool of university students could not be interviewed or surveyed from a practical perspective. This may affect the representativeness of the data. However, it is hoped that this limitation is mitigated by in-depth qualitative analysis, which reveals insights that may then be tested in larger-scale surveys in the future.

Finally, an interesting issue I experienced was that some interviewees, both those who were university students in the 1980s and university students today, were quite reluctant to voice their attitudes about politics, particularly if those attitudes were negative. They would ask multiple times whether their answers would be anonymised, and were worried that they would be identified and disadvantaged in some way. Even though South Korea is a functioning democracy, it appeared that there was still a lack of confidence in the protection of civil rights.

3.3 Interview methods

The primary method of interviewing that I have chosen is the semi-structured interview. According to Bryman (2008), a semi-structured interview is one in which the researcher has a list of questions or fairly specific topics to be covered but the interviewee has a great deal of leeway in how to reply. Questions do not have to follow in exactly in the same way as outlined, and the researcher may ask questions that are not listed in the guide as the interview progresses. However, by and large, all

interview. This type of semi-structured interview is to be distinguished from the structured interview, which aims for all interviewees to be given exactly the same context of questioning, so that each interviewee receives exactly the same interview stimulus as any other. The goal of the structured interviewing is to maximise the validity and reliability of the measurement of key concepts.

In studying the changes in the political culture of university students in South Korea, semi-structured interviews were more appropriate for three reasons. Firstly, semi- structured interviews allow for more flexibility. Secondly, semi-structured interviews allow for the interviewees to go off at different tangents, which may be relevant and important. Thirdly, semi-structured interviews allow for an interviewee to be interviewed on more than one and sometimes even several occasions if needed. The general flexibility of the semi-structured interview is helpful for studying political culture because political attitudes and behaviours differ greatly from person to person. Giving the interviewees greater leeway for going off at tangents may yield interesting and relevant insights. This is especially important because there may be components of political attitude and political behaviour that had not been initially accounted for when formulating the interview questions.

In my interview guide, which is included in Appendix I, I have included introducing questions, specifying questions, interpreting questions, and indirect questions. During some of the interviews, I used follow-up questions and probing questions when necessary. I have tried not to use direct questions or vignette questions. Direct questions are questions like ‘Are you happy with your current lack of interest in politics’. These have an underlying assumption that may be leading and influence the

direction of the interview (Kvale, 1996). Vignette questions are questions that present a hypothetical situation. In the context of the current study, these may be questions like ‘If you were a university student today who was in a particular situation (e.g. low in funds, too busy with work, facing unemployment, etc.), would you participate in politics?’ Mason (2002) counsels against using such vignette questions, arguing that, when they are used, the interviewee usually asks the researcher to clarify the question and may lead to the interviewer’s bias being reflected. Though vignette questions can be employed to help ground interviewees’ views and accounts of behaviour in particular situations (Barter and Renold, 1999), this was unlikely to be necessary in the current study.

The general focus of the interview process was to uncover the attitudes, feelings, values, experiences and reasons for actions related to politics of the interviewees. Therefore, although the interviews all followed the shared structure set out in the interview guide, each interview was unique and provided different accounts of the political culture in the relevant period. Yet, an inherent problem with interviewing to collect data about attitudes and experiences is that the data are only as accurate as the responses provided. Interviewees may express contradictory views and may lie, on purpose or not, to project a certain image that may not be true. For instance, some university students today said that they kept up-to-date about political affairs. However, when asked about their attitudes on political parties, they said that they did not know enough to comment. Similarly, many current university students said that regionalism does not affect their political preferences, but upon further discussion displayed clear regional biases. Other university students would identify themselves as

contradictions. Although these contradictions present a challenge to a straightforward analysis of the findings, they reveal interesting insights into the gap between the ideals that the interviewees wish to project and the reality of their attitudes. Where these contradictions were apparent, I noted them in the analysis of the findings.

3.4 Survey methods

Surveys were conducted on university students today after the first round of interviews through an online survey website. The main objective of the survey on university students today was to corroborate and verify interview findings. The survey questionnaire distributed to the survey respondents is attached in Appendix II. The survey asks the respondents to rate on a scale of 0 to 5 various elements such as levels of satisfaction with politics, interest in politics, political participation, identification with a particular party and political efficacy. It also asks respondents to say whether they agree, partly agree, partly disagree or disagree with specific statements made by interviewees. The responses to these direct questions enabled analysis on whether a particular view expressed by the interviewees was shared by other current university students and how widespread these views were. The survey also made use of open- ended questions that the interviewees had the option of answering to allow them to provide comments that had not been expressed in the other more restricted parts of the survey.

The key advantage of the online survey was that it allowed the testing of the trends and statements made by the interviewees. Since only a limited pool of university students today was interviewed, the survey conducted on a much larger pool helped to validate the representativeness of the interview findings. The survey data was also

more easily analysed, through statistical methods that calculated the percentages and averages of specific responses. However, the key disadvantage of the online survey was that without face-to-face interaction and the direct questions with limited options,