What polls don't say about Yoon

By Kang Hyun-kyung

President Yoon Suk-yeol's low approval rating in the early phase of his presidency is puzzling pundits. Most newly-elected leaders benefit from the so-called "honeymoon period" of their first six months in office and enjoy relatively high support rates, regardless of their performance. Their minor blunders are tolerated during this time.

Yoon is not the first Korean president to see his approval rating take a nosedive during the honeymoon period. Former President Lee Myung-bak grappled with relatively low approval ratings for months after he was inaugurated in February 2008.

Despite this shared experience, there is a clear difference between the two leaders. Lee's poor rating came shortly after his administration decided to resume the import of American beef. As always, trade policy pits certain groups against others because it generates winners and losers. Korean farmers were the losers and they teamed up with other vulnerable groups of people and activists to launch rallies against the government. Hundreds of thousands of people occupied Gwanghwamun Square for days to launch the anti-American beef protests. This dealt a significant blow to the then newly-elected President Lee.

Unlike Lee, Yoon had no such external factor to significantly drag down his rating.

Polls find that some of Yoon's controversial picks are one of the key reasons that pulled his rating down. A Gallup poll showed that nominations (26 percent) took the lion's share among those who disapprove of his presidency, followed by issues such as his political inexperience (11 percent) and policies on the economy and livelihood of the public.

As the poll results said, some of Yoon's Cabinet nominees have revealed flawed ethics and were accused of various illicit activities or troublesome pasts. Some withdrew from consideration while some quit merely weeks after they assumed their posts.

Such troubles are common in all governments. If I remember correctly, almost all Korean presidents were criticized for cronyism or their controversial selections for key government positions.

Then, how were Yoon's predecessors able to maintain relatively higher approval ratings despite their common mistakes?

This question raised the possibility that the real reason behind Yoon's relatively low approval rating might not be directly related to his controversial picks. In other words, Yoon's low approval rating might not be the result of the Korean public being fed up with the president's choices of Cabinet ministers or other key governmental posts.

And there might be other reasons that were not on the list but made the respondents disapprove of Yoon's performance.

The first issue we need to check is his support base. This is about who his supporters are and how loyal they are to him. In contemporary Korean politics, a fan base has emerged as a factor affecting a president's approval rating. As we had seen in approval ratings for Yoon's predecessor, Moon Jae-in, some politicians have a solid support base. Like fans, their supporters are staunch and they rarely withdraw their support for their favorite politicians, regardless of their performance. Moon was able to stay in the 40 percent range of support until the end of his presidency, thanks to his hardcore supporters, who are sarcastically referred to by critics as "Moon-ppa" or fanatics of Moon. Former President Park Geun-hye is another politician with a fan base.

Unfortunately, Yoon does not seem to be a star politician with many dedicated supporters. If he had any, it must be true that the size of his loyal support base may not big enough to sustain his approval rating.

Another factor we can consider as the real reason behind Yoon's unusually low rating is the people around him, such as his family or his confidants.

People judge others based on those who are close to them. We do this especially when the people we are judging are the ones we have no access to. In a case like this, how they are viewed can be a factor to determine our perception and those who are close to them have an impact on our perception of them.

The public can be judgmental about the president because of his wife, his parents and sibling, or his old friends. Few people know much about Yoon's parents, partly because they were not exposed to the media. But people know who his wife is, because contrary to Yoon's other family members, first lady Kim Keon-hee has been over exposed in the media for various reasons. The things she says, the way she dresses and her demeanor in public have affected the Korean public's perception of her husband.

This is essentially what Daegu Mayor Hong Joon-pyo said in a social media post in July. He warned of the negative fallout from Yoon's wife and troublesome confidants on Yoon's presidency.

Not only the president himself and his job performance, but also the people he is close to and interacts with frequently can have an impact on the way the public perceives him. It would be fair to say that Yoon's approval rating is a reflection of the general public's overall impression of the president and people can judge him by his confidants or other figures who are close to him. This is why I think the president needs to be more discerning of the kind of people he surrounds himself with.