Koreans’ attitudes toward China and Chinese people: The effect of direct contact experience

Although the number of Chinese immigrants moving to South Korea has increased in the past decade Koreans still hold negative attitudes toward China and the Chinese populace. To discover whether this prejudice can be reduced, we examined the effect of direct contact with Chinese people on Koreans’ explicit and implicit attitudes toward China and Chinese people. Participants in our study were 91 Korean university students who were divided into two groups based on their contact experience with people from China. The contact group (n = 43) and the noncontact group (n = 48) both completed a cultural experience questionnaire, the Explicit Attitude Questionnaire, and the Implicit Association Test. According to the results, the contact group displayed more positive explicit and implicit attitudes toward China and Chinese people than did the noncontact group. These findings suggest that it may be possible to improve Koreans’ perception of China and relations with Chinese people by increasing direct contact experience between the two communities.