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President Park Geun-hye before her summit with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg

On Apr. 18, President Park Geun-hye wore a green suit instead of the red one (the color of the ruling Saenuri Party) that she had worn so often during the general election campaign, but on the same day the red alert came on for her support rating.

In a regular public survey that polling organization Realmeter conducted with 1,012 adults around the country on Apr. 14 and 15, immediately after the election, Park’s job approval rating was 31.5%, an 8.1 percentage point drop from her rating before the election (39.6%, in a survey from Apr. 4 to 8). This was the lowest the rating has been in any survey that the organization has conducted during Park’s three years and two months in office.

Cracks are starting to show even in Park’s most reliable support bases. Her approval rating in traditional strongholds Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province also dropped 7.5 percentage points from the week before to 48.8%.

at the Blue House

In Busan, South Gyeongsang Province and Ulsan (also traditional bases of conservative support) which gave up nine seats to the opposition in the general elections, her rate was down 16.1 percentage points, plunging to 31%, lower than the national average.

Park’s approval rating also fell sharply among those who are 60 and older, who had been firm supporters of the president, from 68.4% to 56.2%.

Among all the parties, the opposition Minjoo Party of Korea, which became the majority party in the National Assembly in the election, had the highest approval rating since it was established, reaching 30.4%. The Saenuri Party dropped down to second highest, with its approval rating declining 7.3 percentage points to 27.5%. The People‘s Party also edged up 5.4 percentage points to 23.9%, its best showing since its founding.

This survey was conducted using the random dialing method on mobile phones and landlines. The poll had a reliability of 95% with a ±3.1 percentage point margin of error and a response rate of 4%.

By Kim Nam-il, staff reporter

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