Yoon Approval Rating Drops to 20% Range After 5 Months... "Impact of US Wiretapping Controversy"

Korea Gallup Public Opinion Survey from 11th to 13th

President Yoon Suk-yeol's approval rating has plummeted to the 20% range. The rapid decline appears to be due to unfavorable public opinion regarding diplomacy with Japan, compounded by reports of leaked classified documents revealing that U.S. intelligence agencies had wiretapped the presidential office.

On the 14th, Gallup Korea, a professional polling firm, conducted a survey from the 11th to the 13th targeting 1,002 adults nationwide aged 18 and over (with a sampling error of ±3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level). When asked about President Yoon's job performance, 27% responded positively, while 65% responded negatively.

The positive rating dropped 4 percentage points compared to last week's survey, falling into the 20% range for the first time in about five months since the third week of November (29%). The negative rating increased by 4 percentage points.

Gallup analyzed that from the second week of March until last week, positive and negative evaluations of the president's job performance were most frequently associated with Japan and diplomatic relations. However, this week, mentions related to diplomacy increased more than those related to Japan. The wiretapping by a U.S. ally and the government's response to it are interpreted as factors that caused the approval rating to decline.

The president's job approval rating first fell below 30% at the end of July last year, three months after taking office, and recorded a low of 24% in early August and late September. It then remained in the 20% range for a while before recovering to maintain the 30% range until last week. This figure is similar to the public opinion poll results from the third week of October 2016, when suspicions of former President Park Geun-hye's interference in state affairs intensified. At that time, Park's job performance rating was 25% positive and 64% negative.

Source=Korea Gallup

In this survey, among those who gave a negative evaluation of job performance (650 respondents), the reasons cited were 'diplomacy (28%)', 'economy, livelihood, and prices (10%)', and 'Japan relations and forced labor compensation issues (9%)'. Among positive evaluators, the most common response was 'don't know/refused to answer (20%)', followed by 'diplomacy (13%)', 'labor union response', and 'decisiveness and drive', each at 6%.

Those who responded that the president is doing well were mainly supporters of the People Power Party (68%) and those aged 70 and above (54%), while those who said he is doing poorly were mostly supporters of the Democratic Party of Korea (95%) and people in their 30s to 50s (around 80%).

The survey was conducted via random digit dialing (RDD) from a wireless phone sample frame, with interviews conducted by telephone surveyors. The response rate was 8.2%. Detailed information can be found on the Gallup Korea website or the Central Election Survey Deliberation Commission website.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.