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After Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon lambasted South Korea’s central government for its inadequate response to the outbreak of MERS, short for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and announced the Seoul Metropolitan Government would be taking aggressive countermeasures, he was found to be the frontrunner in a poll asking voters about their preferences in the next presidential election.

At the same time, President Park Geun-hye’s approval rating dropped to 33%, which is one percentage point lower than last week and represents a seven percentage point decline during the two weeks of the outbreak.

Park Won-soon

According to the results of a poll of 1,002 people that Gallup Korea conducted between June 9 and 11 and released on June 12, the percentage of respondents who favor Park Won-soon in the next presidential election jumped 6 percentage points to 17%, which was higher than any other potential candidate. This was the first time this year that Park came in first place in this monthly poll.

Moon Jae-in, leader of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), and Kim Moo-sung, leader of the Saenuri Party (NFP), tied for second at 13%.

For the five consecutive months last year between August and December, Park had come in first in the poll, but this year he had yielded the position to Moon Jae-in.

“Park has returned to the spotlight recently because of his proactive response to the MERS outbreak,” said Heo Jin-jae, director of Gallup Korea.

In the poll, Park enjoyed a high level of support in Seoul (22%) and Jeolla provinces (25%), while his 14% showing in Busan put him neck and neck with Moon Jae-in (15%) and Kim Moo-sung (14%).

Park (33%) was also ahead of Moon Jae-in (28%) among NPAD supporters.

Meanwhile, the assessment of President Park Geun-hye’s job performance was 33%, lower than during the corruption scandal about the Sung Wan-jong list this past April, when it ranged from 34% to 39%. The percentage of respondents who think Park is doing a bad job was 58%, up three percentage points from last week (55%).

The reason that the most respondents gave for their poor assessment was “Park’s lacklustre response to the spread of MERS” (27%). This was followed by “inadequate communication and too much secrecy” (13%), “not smoothly running the country” (13%), and “inadequate leadership and passing the buck” (12%).

Park’s approval rating has plummeted during the spread of MERS over the past few weeks among residents of Seoul (37%→28%), people in their 20s (21%→9%), people in their 50s (56%→39%), and high income earners (47%→28%).

When asked whether they expect the MERS outbreak to subside, 58% of respondents said they expect it to subside within a few days, while 31% expect that it will continue to spread.

More than half of respondents were worried about contracting MERS, with 54% concerned and 44% unconcerned, but this was a steep decline from the previous week (67%).

Concerns about infection about were high in the capital area (62% in Seoul and 56% in Gyeonggi Province), where most of the cases have occurred. By age, concerns were higher among younger people (63% for people in their 30s and 59% for people in their 20s) than among the elderly (46% among people 60 and above), who are actually more at risk of contracting the disease.

The poll was conducted on the telephone through random dialing. The response rate was 18%, and the margin of error was ±3.1%, with a reliability of 95%.

By Kim Kyung-wook, staff reporter

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