However, those who gave positive replies to this second question formed a much smaller majority than those replying positively about the regime’s degree of democracy. A little more than three-fifths (62%) affirmed that the current regime performs as a democracy more often to their satisfaction than dissatisfaction. This figure is 20 percentage points lower than those who perceived the current regime as a democracy. Even among those who perceive the current regime as a democracy, the satisfied constitute a small majority of less than twothirds (66%).

A more notable feature of the assessments of democratic performance among the Korean people is the near absence of highly positive ratings. As in the perceptions of democratic regime character, a very small proportion (1%) reported being highly satisfied with the performance of the current regime as a democracy. Even among those Koreans who recognized the current regime as a democracy, less than two percent expressed a high level of satisfaction with its overall performance. Regardless of whether the Korea people perceive the regime as a democracy, they generally agree that the current regime is far from being a highly well functioning democracy.

Naturally, the question arises: What sort or quality of democracy does the current democratic regime in Korea represent in the eyes of its citizenry? To address this question, we first collapsed together the negative responses to the aforementioned two items and derived three different degrees or levels-very little, some, and large-of democratic development and regime satisfaction. Then we considered together the development and satisfaction levels to ascertain the modal quality of democracy that the current regime represents to the people. Table 3 gives the percentages of the Korean people falling into nine different types of perceived regime quality.