hankyoreh

Still from a campaign ad by Yoon Suk-yeol during the lead-up to the 2022 presidential election.

South Koreans in their 20s and 30s showed high levels of support for Yoon Suk-yeol while he was a candidate in last year’s presidential election, alongside voters in their 60s and 70s. A year after his inauguration, Yoon has lost many of these younger voters’ support, survey results show.

One expert saw the sharp about-face by young voters as a response to his failure to show the agenda-setting capabilities they had hoped for early on in his administration, after supporting him out of disappointment with the performance of progressives and reformists in the later part of the Moon Jae-in presidency.

At the request of the Hankyoreh, the public opinion polling agency Global Research conducted a survey of 1,011 voting-age men and women in South Korea nationwide on April 29–30.

The results showed that while respondents in their 40s — a key support base for the opposition Democratic Party — represented the largest percentage of negative assessments of Yoon’s performance (74.7%), those in their 30s accounted for the next-largest at 70.6%.

At the time of the presidential election in May 2022, the 30–39 age group showed the second-highest level of support for Yoon after voters in their 60s and 70s, with 48.1% of them saying they had voted for him in a joint exit poll conducted by South Korea’s three terrestrial broadcasters.

They were also the only under-50 age group that showed a higher level of support for Yoon than for his opponent, the Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung (46.3%).

The 30–39 cohort also had the highest proportion of independents. The overall percentage of independents was 25.8%, while 39.7% of 30-something said they did not support any specific party — a 12.3-percentage point jump from the 27.4% in that age group who gave the same answer in an opinion poll by the Hankyoreh in January.

Breakdown of Yoon’s polling numbers by age cohort.

Compared with that survey, the latest results showed support for the ruling People Power Party down 5.3 percentage points from 32.2% to 26.9% among respondents in their 30s, while support for the Democratic Party dropped by 6.9 percentage points from 32.2% to 25.3%.

As recently as the early stages of the Moon administration in 2019, South Koreans in their 30s showed higher levels of support for Moon than those in their 40s.

But that support began falling away quickly in the second half of 2020 as real estate price issues began emerging. The 30–39 age group is seen as especially sensitive to economic issues in comparison with the 40–59 age group, which is more sensitive to issues related to democracy and politics.

Across all groups, respondents in their 30s showed the most negative views on the Yoon administration’s “fairness” in the latest poll. While 61.8% of all respondents expressed negative views, the proportion among those in their 30s was 75.1%.

“The voters who went conservative out of disappointment with the Democratic Party over real estate issues in the roughly one-year period between the 2021 by-elections and the presidential election appear to have quickly withdrawn their support for the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, but without also regaining trust in the Democratic Party,” concluded Shin Jin-wook, a professor of sociology at Chung-Ang University.

“There is a strong chance they’ve reacted sensitively to issues of economic fairness in particular, such as the not-guilty judgment in the case of former People Power Party lawmaker Kwak Sang-do’s son receiving a 5-billion-won severance package,” he suggested.

Another notable finding was that the most negative assessments of Yoon’s performance were seen among respondents in their 20s. After the 30–39 age group, this group showed the highest support for Yoon among non-senior citizens in the presidential election, with broadcasting network exit polls showing a level of 45.%.

While 36.1% of all respondents expressed a positive rating of Yoon’s performance, only 20.2% of those in their 20s agreed. The results suggested an overall loss of support among voters in their 20s and 30s.

“The 20- and 30-somethings are sensitive to fairness issues, but there haven’t been any fairness-oriented policies implemented during the current administration,” said Lee Kwan-hu, a professor at Konkuk University’s Sang-Huh College.

“And if you look at President Yoon’s rhetoric, his focus is not on fairness issues but on ‘freedom,’ which is the language of people in their 60s and 70s,” he continued. “That aspect may be what is responsible for the loss of support among younger voters.”

By Um Ji-won, staff reporter; Seo Young-ji, staff reporter

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