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President Yoon Suk-yeol answers questions from the press as he arrives at the presidential office in Yongsan, Seoul, on July 18. (Yonhap News)

Various opinion polls show that more Koreans disapprove of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s performance than approve of it, with over 60% of respondents believing he is not doing a good job running the country.

Polling firm Realmeter polled 2,519 voting-age adults across the country from July 11-15, asking them to rate Yoon’s performance regarding state affairs. 33.4% said the president was doing a good job, down 3.6 points from the previous week. On the other hand, 63.3% of respondents held the opinion that Yoon was “not doing a good job” — up 6.3 points compared to a week ago. The survey had a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The results are significant as this marks the first time that a negative evaluation of the current administration has exceeded 60% in a Realmeter survey.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s approval rating was 44.2%, up 2.4 percentage points from last week, while support for the Peoples Power Party (PPP) stood at 39.1%, down 1.8 percentage points compared to a week ago.

The gap in support between the two parties is now 5.1 percentage points, which is outside the margin of error. This also marks the first time that the Democratic Party’s approval rating has surpassed that of the PPP in a year and a half.

Another survey, carried out by the Korea Society Opinion Institute and commissioned by TBS, polled 1,000 adults nationwide between Saturday and Sunday. This survey arrived at similar figures to that by Realmeter, with 32% of respondents rating Yoon’s performance positively while 63.7% held a negative view of the president’s current handling of state affairs. The survey had a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Negative evaluations of Yoon reached 60.8% last week, breaking the 60% mark for the first time in his term as president. Disapproval ratings were up by a further 2.9 percentage points this week while his approval rate fell by 2.5 percentage points.

Regarding the Yoon administration’s recent decisions concerning the shooting death of the civil servant in the Yellow Sea and the repatriation of North Korean fishers under the Moon Jae-in administration, 51.8% of survey respondents said they disagree with the current government’s approach while 41.2% are supportive.

The ruling PPP’s approval rating was 34.5%, the Democratic Party’s was 32.9%, while support for the Justice Party stood at 4.7%. More information can be found on the website of the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission (in Korean).

By Joh Yun-yeong, staff reporter

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