75% believe Moon Jae-in will do good job

By Kim Hyo-jin

Three out of four Koreans believe President Moon Jae-in will do a good job, according to an opinion poll released Monday.

The poll conducted by Realmeter for three days from May 10, one day after Moon was sworn in, showed 74.8 percent of respondents expect Moon to perform well in the highest office while 16 percent said he will do a poor job. The remaining 9.2 percent answered they were unsure.

Analysts said the results reflect a positive public response to the new leader’s anti-authoritarian and reformative moves taken following his inauguration.

Moon nominated a prime minister and named key aides swiftly to normalize state affairs.

Asked which sector should be the top priority in Moon’s reform agenda, 24 percent picked the prosecution. This was followed by the political sector, media, labor, conglomerates, the civil service and the National Intelligence Service.

Among state affairs, 30.8 percent picked restoring the slumping economy as the top priority. The next most popular issues were cleaning out social evils, resolving security concerns, achieving national unity and mitigating economic inequality.

Moon even garnered support from respondents across regions, generations and political ideologies.

Those in the Jeolla provinces and Gwangju gave Moon the most favorable outlook with 82.8 percent, followed by Seoul (77.1 percent), Gyeonggi Province and Incheon (76 percent), Daejeon, Sejong City, and the Chungcheong provinces (76 percent), Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province (71.2 percent), Gangwon Province (70 percent), and Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang Province (68.7 percent).

People in their 20s showed high hopes for Moon’s presidency with support of 82 percent while those in their 60s who gave the lowest rating still expressed high expectations with 61.5 percent.

Liberals put him at 89.8 percent, centrists at 75.9 percent, and conservatives at 51.7 percent.

Moon’s Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) was favored by 44.7 percent of respondents, up 3 percentage points from the previous week, buoyed by the post-election boost, while the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) was placed at 13 percent, down 4.5 percentage points.

Meanwhile, the progressive Justice Party, whose presidential candidate Sim Sang-jung outperformed other candidates during the overall campaign, was placed third with an approval rating of 9.6 percent.

The center-left People’s Party mustered 8.8 percent and the conservative Bareun Party got 8.3 percent.

The poll was conducted on 1,516 respondents and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.