Over 50% ROK citizens back end of GSOMIA with Japan: poll

Over half of people from the Republic of Korea (ROK) supported the scheduled termination of military intelligence pact with Japan, called the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), a poll showed Monday.

According to the Realmeter survey, 55.4 percent of respondents said the decision to terminate the GSOMIA should be upheld. It was up 7.1 percentage points from the result of the survey on Nov 6.

Those who supported the renewal of the GSOMIA was 33.2 percent, down from 37.6 percent tallied on Nov 6.

The results were based on a poll of 501 voters conducted on Friday. It had plus and minus 4.4 percentage points in margin of error with a 95 percent confidence level.

It came ahead of the scheduled termination on Nov 23 of the GSOMIA, which was signed in November 2016 by the ROK and Japan to share military intelligence on nuclear and missile programs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The ROK decided in August to scrap the military accord in response to Japan's tightened regulations in July over its export to the ROK of three materials, vital to produce memory chips and display panels that are the mainstay of the ROK's export.

Japan's export curbs came in an apparent protest against the ROK top court's rulings that ordered some of Japanese companies to pay reparation to the ROK's victims who were forced into hard labor without pay during the 1910-1945 Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.