Seoul: President Lee Jae Myung's approval rating fell to 57 percent, a survey showed Thursday, amid negative sentiment over his special pardons for political figures. In a National Barometer Survey (NBS) conducted from Monday to Wednesday, the positive assessment of Lee's performance declined 8 percentage points from the previous poll conducted two weeks ago.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the negative assessment of Lee rose 9 percentage points to 33 percent, surpassing the 30 percent mark for the first time in NBS polls. The approval rating for the ruling Democratic Party fell 4 percentage points to 40 percent. Support for the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) added 3 percentage points to 19 percent, slightly rebounding after hitting a record low of 16 percent in the previous survey. The approval rating for the PPP has remained below 20 percent for seven consecutive weeks.
In the same survey, 54 percent of the respondents gave a negative assessment of Lee's special pardon of high-profile figures on Liberation Day last week, including former Justice Minister Cho Kuk and former Rep. Youn Mee-hyang. Cho, who formerly headed the Rebuilding Korea Party and had served as a justice minister in 2019, was serving a two-year prison term after the Supreme Court in December upheld his conviction for academic fraud involving his children and unlawful interference with a government inspection. He was released from prison last Friday. Youn was convicted of embezzling funds donated to help support women who were forced into wartime sexual slavery by Japan during World War II.
The survey was conducted by pollsters Embrain Public, Kstat Research, Korea Research and Hankook Research on 1,001 people aged 18 and older. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.