Abstract
An important question for societies where contact with refugees is scarce concerns what shapes attitudes toward them. Existing studies treat contact as a single dimension or attribute hostile attitudes to a deficit of information. This paper argues that attitudes are shaped not by whether contact occurs but by its quality and by the mediated contact that takes its place, and that objective knowledge moderates the effect of mediated contact. Using the 2025 Korean Public Opinion Survey on Refugees, it classifies contact as direct, passive indirect through news reports, and active indirect through online media, and estimates acceptance and social distance with ordered logistic and ordinary least squares regression. The analysis shows that direct contact raises acceptance and reduces social distance, and that this effect is concentrated in relationship-based rather than incidental contact. Passive indirect contact is negatively associated with acceptance, while active indirect contact shows no independent effect. Finally, respondents with high objective knowledge do not become less accepting as their exposure to news reports rises. These results suggest that improving refugee acceptance depends less on the volume of information than on relationship-based contact and accurate knowledge.
BibTeX citation
@article{ParkLim:2026_21st,
Author = {Park, Sanghoon, and Yoojin Lim},
Journal = {21st centry Political Science Review},
Number = {3},
Pages = {195--228},
Title = {Refugee Contact and Public Attitudes toward Refugees in South Korea: The Moderating Effect of Refugee Knowledge on Refugee Acceptance and Social Distance},
Volume = {36},
Year = {2026}}