Lee's social media posts and the elephant in the Blue House

President Lee Jae Myung’s recent splurge of social media posts represents a novel attempt to tackle a familiar problem. His three immediate predecessors all had X (formerly Twitter) accounts, but their use of the platform was modest. Lee is hipper than they were on this front.

Last month, he averaged four posts a day, a personal record. So far in October, he has averaged six.

What explains this?

Media analysts have noted that the increase in his X activity has coincided with a decline in his approval rating. That is the familiar problem I alluded to.

Before dealing with it, though, I’d make three observations. The first is obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: In case I was not clear, his posts are not causing the drop in approval. They are an attempt to counter it.

The second concerns the timing of the strategy. Actually, Lee’s approval rating is not that low. It’s just under 40 percent, which is not bad in a country that is 67th in the Global Happiness Index and where, as this suggests, people are inclined to moan. So, why take action now? Well, it’s not the number that counts. It’s the direction, which is downward.

The third observation is the wisdom of turning up the X dial. What’s the point given that X is not widely used in Korea?

The official figure of 10.4 million users in Korea is an estimate of potential advertising reach, not a count of active users. In reality, its use is quite limited and, even then, the platform is strongly associated here with K-pop fandom. I cannot recall a single occasion when a Korean has told me they saw something on Twitter or X, let alone admitted to posting anything there themselves.

But while Lee’s objective is to reach the people, his use of X is actually a media strategy. Journalists don’t just post on the platform themselves; they use it to find stories. When the president posts — as do some other world leaders, and in considerably greater quantities — he is shaping the news agenda.

So how does this help him? It gives him a sense of control. To be honest, I’m not sure it achieves much more than that, in terms of stemming the downward slide in public approval.

Of course, approval matters. A president who loses public support may find it harder to get legislation through the National Assembly, maintain discipline in his own party and persuade people to accept difficult policies. But approval is a means to an end, not the end itself. The danger is that a president who spends too much time worrying about what people think of him starts making decisions to improve his standing rather than to serve the national interest.

Sometimes the national interest requires decisions that are unpopular, at least in the short term. For example, we can see with Lee and his predecessor that Korea is getting closer to Japan, but the progress is far more hesitant than it needs to be because of the presidential eye on the polls.

If a president avoids acting in the national interest for fear of a dip in the polls, he is allowing the measure of his performance to become a substitute for the purpose of his office.

And in Korea, where a president can serve only one five-year term, there is a particular irony in this. There is no second term to win. There are, however, five years in which to govern. A president should surely be more concerned with what he leaves behind than with the approval rating he leaves with.

That brings me back to the familiar problem of declining approval ratings.

The best way to understand the Korean presidency, and to work out where we are as each year rolls around, is to imagine the president in relation to the elephant of public sentiment.

I should point out that, although we talk about approval ratings as if they were scientific measurements, public sentiment is visceral. This is not too hard to appreciate. Much political analysis, if we are honest — and I see no reason not to be — consists of rationalizing positions that people have already arrived at emotionally.

Public sentiment encompasses the phenomenon in which feelings toward a person, a party, a company or another country turn negative, sometimes even murderous. These feelings light up pathways not just within individual brains but between people. The result is a critical mass of vicious disapproval.

This is what I mean by the elephant.

When a president is elected, the landscape is all cuddly koalas and frisky lambs. The elephant is safely caged in Seoul Grand Park. But sometime around the end of the first year, it escapes and finds its way to the gates of Cheong Wa Dae. By the end of the second year, it is pushing its way into the presidential office, felt, but not seen, by the incumbent and ignored by his aides.

By the end of the term, the elephant has gone rogue. Inevitably, it gets its trunk around our hapless leader and flings him out of office, usually with his reputation in tatters and facing, or members of his family facing, prosecution.

Moon Jae-in was the exception. He left office with his approval rating still around 40 percent, unusually high for a departing Korean president, and without him or his immediate family facing investigation of any kind.

It is still early days, and Lee may yet avoid the fate of his predecessors. But turning to X is not what will make the difference.

Ironically, the best strategy might be to ignore the approval ratings, ignore the elephant itself, and focus laser-like not on what the people want but on what is in their best interests.

Michael Breen (mike.breen@insightcomms.com) is the author of "The New Koreans.” The views expressed here are his own.