Abstract
This study analyzes attitudes toward refugee acceptance in South Korea, focusing on the interaction between authoritarian and populist orientations. While existing studies emphasize threat perceptions, ideology, identity, and refugee knowledge, we argue that anxiety over order and homogeneity, when combined with a people-versus-elite frame, casts refugees as targets of exclusion and amplifies opposition to their acceptance. Using the 2025 Korean Refugee Perception Survey, logistic regression models show that both orientations independently predict opposition, and that populist orientation conditionally amplifies the negative effect of authoritarian orientation. These findings suggest that conflict over refugees is not simply about threat perception, but is also shaped by deeper predispositions over who counts as ‘the people.’
BibTeX citation
@article{Parketal:2026,
Author = {Park, Sanghoon, Song Young Hoon, and Hyeonjun Kim},
Journal = {The Journal of Political Science \& Communication},
Number = {1},
Pages = {69-106},
Title = {The Interaction of Authoritarian and Populist Orientations on Attitudes toward Refugees},
Volume = {29},
Year = {2026}}