Comparing Conceptual and Factual Political Knowledge among Korean Citizens

초록

Scholars in the literature of political knowledge have long debated whether ordinary citizens are information generalists or specialists. Their contributions notwithstanding, they have not had a common conceptual foundation of political knowledge and their studies have been conducted in Western democracies. This study is an effort to shed new light on the debate by re-conceptualizing political knowledge and exploring different types of political knowledge in South Korea, one of the representative East Asian democracies. Using the Korea Democracy Barometer 2010, the study compared factual political knowledge and conceptual knowledge about democracy. The empirical analysis revealed that the two types of knowledge are weakly correlated and their sources differ to some degree. These findings make an important implication about Korean democracy in that factually knowledgeable citizens may not necessarily be informed about democracy.

키워드