South Korea’s Yoon casts early vote

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol cast his ballot Friday as early voting got under way ahead of next week’s general election, where his party will seek to win back its parliamentary majority.

The South Korean leader’s approval ratings have fallen below 40 percent in recent weeks, according to some pollsters, driven by a litany of scandals and voter dissatisfaction with rising inflation.

Experts said the poll is crucial for Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) because his authority could be significantly weakened for the final three years of his term if the opposition wins a supermajority.

Yoon cast his vote in the country’s southern port city of Busan on Friday, and afterwards thanked the staff at the polling station, his office said.

The president and 11.1 percent of the country’s eligible voters had cast their ballots at more than 3,500 polling stations nationwide as of 3 p.m. (0600 GMT) on Friday, according to the country’s election commission.

It is the highest turnout for a general election during the specified time slot since early voting was introduced in 2013, authorities said.

Yoon had on Thursday urged every eligible voter to cast their ballot, calling it both an “exercise of right and responsibility.”

He is only allowed a single five-year term under the constitution, and his party is eager to win control of parliament so they can make progress on his socially conservative agenda and hawkish approach to Pyongyang.

While his party has faced scandals, including a claim that Yoon’s former defense minister interfered with a probe into a young marine’s death, the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) leader Lee Jae-myung has been mired in criminal investigations.

In a joint survey published on Thursday by four leading polling organizations, 39 percent of its participants said they would vote for the PPP, while 37 percent for the DP.

In the 2022 presidential race, Yoon narrowly beat Lee by a small margin of 0.73 percent, with the DP still holding the parliamentary majority.

“If Yoon’s party does well, it will give him more leverage; if his party does poorly, it could effectively keep Yoon from leading,” Linda Hasunuma, a political scientist at Temple University, told AFP.

The early voting period ends on Saturday.