Approval rating for Moon keeps falling
President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating has been falling for more than a month, recent surveys showed.
The downward tendency is attributable to the controversy over the fairness of the employment of subcontracted workers at Incheon International Airport Corp., a newly announced government policy that has failed to tackle skyrocketing housing prices, and poor performance in national security and diplomacy with North Korea.
According to a survey of 1,000 adults released by Gallup Korea Friday, 50 percent of respondents said they believed Moon is doing a good job, down 2 percentage points from a week earlier.
Moon’s approval rating has been falling for five consecutive weeks since the fourth week of May when it was 65 percent. It even hit 71 percent in the first week of May following the ruling Democratic Party of Korea’s landslide victory in the April general election.
Another survey by Realmeter showed, Thursday, Moon’s approval rating stood at 49.4 percent, dipping below 50 percent for the first time in four months.
Political watchers say the continuous decrease in Moon’s approval rating is due to a combination of some failures in state policies rather than any one specific reason.
They attributed Moon’s labor policies aimed at helping irregular workers, in particular, to the growing disapproval of Moon’s performance among those in their 20s who are struggling to find full-time jobs.
The young age group criticized the Incheon airport operator’s recent decision to hire subcontracted security workers as regular workers, a measure in line with Moon’s pledge for “zero irregular workers” to protect employees from being mistreated at work. They claim the decision deprived many jobseekers of job opportunities unfairly.
Soaring housing prices are adding to people’s dissatisfaction with Moon’s handling of economic policies. A government measure announced last week to cool the real estate market has rather raised housing prices in some regions, and the President instructed his aides to come up with another measure, Thursday.
In a related move, presidential chief of staff Noh Youngmin strongly advised senior Cheong Wa Dae officials to sell any additional homes they own and to keep just one, to set an example. But Noh himself is receiving criticism for keeping a home in Seoul’s wealthy Gangnam area, known for its exorbitant real-estate prices, and instead trying to sell another low-priced home in North Chungcheong Province.
Choi Young-il, a political commentator and adjunct professor at Kyung Hee Cyber University, said Moon’s approval rating would level out with both positive and negative public opinions on other issues but the real estate issue would continue to have a negative effect on Moon’s approval rating.
“Presidential chief of staff Noh’s housing situation is yet to be reflected in recent surveys of Moon’s approval rating but the negative effect it would have could be larger than previous cases of former aides to Moon,” Choi said. “The real estate issue will become the main issue in the second half of this year and people across all income levels are sensitive to this issue.”