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President Moon Jae-in presides over a meeting of his senior secretariat

One month into office, Moon Jae-in has the highest approval rating of any President in South Korean history.

In a survey of 1,004 adults nationwide by the polling organization Gallup Korea for Moon’s fourth week in office on May 30-June 1 (95% confidence level, ±3.1 percentage point margin of error), 84% of respondents rated Moon as doing a “good job” with his duties, a record since Gallup first began surveying presidential performance ratings in 1984. The total was over 10 percentage points higher than those of Kim Young-sam (in office 1993-98) and Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003), each of whom had a 71% approval rating after the first month in office in Mar. 1993 and Mar. 1998, respectively. Roh Moo-hyun (2003-08) had a 60% approval rating as of Apr. 2003, while Lee Myung-bak (2008-13) earned 52% in Mar. 2008. Moon’s number was nearly double the first-month approval rating for Park Geun-hye (2013-16), who earned just 44% in her fourth week in office in Mar. 2013.

Among the 843 respondents who rated Moon’s performance as “good” in Gallup’s May 30-June 1 survey, 18% praise his “efforts at communication and national consensus.” Many said they had been impressed by his genuine and unceremonious attitude, as when he sat side by side with family members, patriots, and veterans at memorial ceremonies for the May 18 Democratization Movement in Gwangju and Memorial Day or warmly took their hands and embraced them.

In his own assessment of the Moon administration’s first 30 days in office, Blue House Senior Secretary to the President for Public Relations Yoon Young-chan said on June 8 that it had “worked to overcome authoritarianism and communicate on the public’s level.”

The approval ratings could yet be swayed depending on how the administration responds to a number of issues, including its as yet unfilled Cabinet, scrutiny of its appointees, handling of the revised supplementary budget, collaborative governance with opposition parties, and rising housing prices. Indeed, another survey rating Moon’s performance by the polling organization Real Meter showed his approval rating at 78.1% as of the fifth week of May, down from 84.1% during the fourth week. As reasons for the slide, Real Meter pointed to an “opposition offensive and the loss of supporters” over confirmation hearings and the controversy over omission of a report on additional THAAD launcher deliveries.

“The biggest variables are going to be conflicts between the party and government over appointments, policy disagreements over the revised supplementary budget, and frictions between the ruling party and other opposition parties besides the [conservative] Liberty Korea Party,” predicted Suh Bok-kyung, a senior researcher at the Sogang University Institute for Political Studies.

Yoon Tae-gon, head of political analysis for the Agenda and Strategy Group, said an early decline in support is “something to inevitably go through.”

Yoon went on to say a soft landing at a majority support rating would “ultimately require an effective resolution of economic and security matters,” adding that the “role of the ruling party will be crucial.”

By Jung Yu-gyung, staff reporter

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