US, Korea summit boosts Moon’s ratings

SEOUL: South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating jumped this week on the agreed summits between South Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and between the DPRK and the US, a poll showed yesterday.

According to the Realmeter survey, support for Jae-in was 69.2% this week, up 3.4% points from a week earlier. The result was based on a poll of 1 502 voters conducted from Monday to Wednesday. It had 2.5% points in margin of error with a 95% confidence level.

The rapid increase in Jae-in’s support score came as his special envoys visited Pyongyang and Washington last week, helping bring about the agreements to hold the inter-Korean summit in late April and the DPRK-US summit by May.

The positive agreements were reflected in Jae-in’s support rate belatedly as some liberal politicians were embroiled in sex abuse scandals last week.

The pollster said public opinion spread that the sex abuse is happening in the entire society, not in the liberal bloc alone.

Jae-in’s ruling liberal Democratic Party garnered 51.5% of support this week, up 3.4% points from the previous week.

Support for the main opposition Liberty Korea Party fell 0.3% points to 18.9%, keeping a downward trend for the second consecutive week. The minor conservative Bareun Future Party’s support dipped 1 percentage point to 7.4%.

Approval scores for the minor progressive Justice Party and the minor liberal Party for Democracy and Peace stood at 4.8% and 2.8%, respectively.