Moon's approval rate drops for 1st time
By Kim Rahn
The approval rating for President Moon Jae-in has fallen for the first time since his inauguration, a survey showed Monday.
The decline is attributable to the alleged past wrongdoings of some of his minister nominees and the controversy over the investigation into a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment here, the poll agency said.
According to Realmeter, Moon’s approval rating stood at 78.1 percent last week, down 6 percentage points from the previous week. It was also the first time that the rate has gone below 80 percent _ it was 81.6 percent two weeks ago and 84.1 percent one week ago.
Negative evaluation of Moon also rose by 4.2 percentage points to 14.2 percent from a week ago.
“Opposition parties have intensified their offense to Cabinet member nominees as the confirmation hearings began, and the parties are criticizing the President’s order for the THAAD investigation. Such issues have made some supporters turn away from Moon,” the poll agency said.
In the confirmation hearings, some nominees were grilled over their alleged ethical lapses and some others are facing similar situations _ Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon, Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha and Fair Trade Commission Chairman nominee Kim Sang-jo were involved in false residence registrations; Kang faces other allegations of her daughter’s tax evasion; Kim allegedly falsely reported the value of his house; and Constitutional Court President-designate Kim Yi-su allegedly made rulings favorable to the government’s bloody suppression of the pro-democracy uprising in Gwangju in 1980.
Regarding THAAD, Cheong Wa Dae said last week that the Ministry of National Defense deliberately did not share important information about the anti-missile system’s deployment with the new administration. Moon ordered an investigation into the deployment process and the alleged omission of the information in the ministry’s policy briefing to the President.
More than 77 percent of the survey respondents expected Moon would do well in managing state affairs for the remaining five years of his term, down 5.2 percentage points from the previous week. Some 14 percent predicted he would not do so, up 4.2 percentage points.
The support rate for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea also declined slightly by 1.1 percentage point to 55.6 percent. That of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, which strongly criticized the ministers’ nomination and THAAD probe, edged up by 1 percentage point to 13 percent, its first upward turn in three weeks.
The survey was conducted with 2,527 adults from May 29 to June 2. It had a confidence rate of 95 percent with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.