Abstract

The young Korean voters born in the 1970s, despite their relatively higher interpersonal trust positively related to participation in party politics, have a higher percentage of non-partisans and the alienated from party politics than their elders. After confirming generation's significant impact on interpersonal trust through a logic analysis based on the socialization and performance perspectives, we picked up three attitudinal variables-political efficacy, political trust, and political interest-to explain the incongruity between young Korean voter's higher interpersonal trust and their negative attitudes toward political parties. Through a series of logit analyses we could find that generation factor is the only sociological variable which has a significant impact on all three political attitudes. However, generation factor is not working in the same direction. That is, generation factor has the effect of strengthening political efficacy, whereas it weakens political trust and political interest. In other words, the level of political trust and political interest among young Korean voters are quite low despite their strong political efficacy.

 Such attitudinal features of the youngest generation complicate this generation's relationship with party politics by working crosswise. A logit analysis of non-partisans shows us that the only significant attitudinal variable is political interest negatively associated with young Koreans. Similarly, through another logit analysis of partisan alienation we could find that although both political interest and political efficacy have the significant efficacy of reading the alienated from party politics, the strong influence of political interest overwhelms the impact of political efficacy positively related to young Koreans.

 To conclude, generation factor itself has the significant effect of increasing non-partisans and the alienated from party politics. More important, generation factor also has an indirect efficacy of increasing non-partisans and the alienated from party politics through its negative association with political interest which strongly reduces partisan alienation and non-partisanship, overwhelming generation factor's other indirect effect of reducing the alienated from party politics and non-partisans through its positive association with political efficacy. Given the significant impact of political attitudes, the transformation of young Koreans' increased interpersonal trust into their more positive participation in party politics is not likely to be realized without a change in their political attitude. in particular, the analysis suggests that political interest is the major intervening variable. Thus, enhancing the level of political interest among young Koreans seems to be crucial to this transformation.