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A public opinion poll shows that the approval rating for South Korean President Moon Jae-in stands at 45%, one percentage point higher than the week before. Moon will be marking the second anniversary of his inauguration as president on May 10. While about half of those polled gave a positive rating to the Moon administration’s handling of welfare, North Korea, and foreign policy, less than 30% approved of its policy on employment and labor, the economy, and the appointment of public officials.

Gallup Korea published these results on May 3 after surveying 1,004 voters around the country between Apr. 30 and May 2 in a poll with a reliability of 95% and a ±3.1 percentage point margin of error. Positive assessments of Moon’s job performance were up one percentage point to 45% from the previous week, negative assessments were down one point to 46%, and 9% of respondents said they weren’t sure. When the results are broken down by age group, Moon was approved by 44% of people in their 20s, 61% in their 30s, 54% in their 40s, 42% in their 50s and 30% in their 60s and above.

The most common reason given for rating Moon’s performance positively was that he has improved South Korea’s relationship with the North (16%), with other common responses being that he has done his best and that he’s good at foreign policy (14%). The reasons for assessing him poorly, ranked in order, were not doing enough to deal with economic and livelihood issues (44%), overemphasizing North Korean relations and being too friendly with the North (13%), and being heavy-handed, unilateral, and biased (7%).

Approval ratings for S. Korean presidents 2 years into office. Blue: approval. Red: disapproval. From thre left

How does Moon compare to previous presidents?

Gallup Korea also compared Moon’s current approval rating with the ratings of other presidents after two years in office. The results are as follows: Roh Tae-woo had an approval rating of 28% (February 1990); Kim Young-sam, 37% (March 1995); Kim Dae-jung, 49% (February 2000), Roh Moo-hyun, 33% (January 2005); Lee Myung-bak, 44% (February 2012); and Park Geun-hye, 33% (February 2015).

“Shortly after the inter-Korean summit on Apr. 27, 2018, and the Panmunjom Declaration, Moon had an approval rating of 83%, which was higher than any other president one year into their presidency. But Moon’s approval rating slid after he took criticism for issues such as the economy, jobs, and livelihood after the regional elections last year, and his approval and disapproval ratings have both been above 40% for five months,” Gallup Korea explained.

Whereas the approval ratings of Roh Tae-woo, Kim Young-sam, and Kim Dae-jung peaked in their first year in office and then gradually fell during their second year, Roh Moo-hyun, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye all hit their nadir in their first year before seeing a slight bump in their approval rating on the second anniversary of their inauguration, Gallup Korea added. Roh’s rating was affected by his impeachment and corruption by his close associates; Lee’s by candlelit rallies against importing American beef; and Park’s by confusion about tax reporting in 2015.

Economic policy main culprit behind disapproval

In this poll, respondents were also asked whether they approve or disapprove of the current administration’s policy in seven major areas. Welfare policy earned the approval of 51% of respondents, while both North Korea policy and foreign policy was approved by 45%. Ranked from most to least approved, the other policy categories were education at 33%, employment and labor at 29%, appointment of public officials at 26%, and economic policy at 23%. The polling organization reported that positive assessments of North Korea policy and foreign policy had fallen by 14 points and 7 points, respectively, since a poll in February. At the same time, approval of employment and labor policy had risen by 3 points and disapproval had fallen by 5 points, making this the only one of seven categories in which approval had risen, albeit slightly.

In terms of party approval rating, the Democratic Party was preferred by 36% of respondents, up one point from the previous week, while the Liberty Korea Party remained at 24%, the same as before. The Justice Party (8%) and the Bareunmirae Party (6%) both saw a one point drop compared to the previous week. The Party for Democracy and Peace was supported by 0.4% of respondents, while 26% said they were unaligned. The detailed outline and results of the survey can be found on the websites of Gallup Korea and the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission.

By Kim Min-na, staff reporter

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