President Lee Jae-myung delivers a commemorative address during a Labor Day ceremony at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, Friday. Yonhap
President Lee Jae Myung's approval rating fell below the 60 percent mark for the first time in two months partly due to growing concerns over people's livelihoods, a survey showed Monday.
According to the survey conducted by Realmeter and commissioned by the EKN newspaper among 2,006 respondents aged 18 and older, the positive assessment of Lee's performance slipped 2.7 percentage points to 59.5 percent.
Negative assessments rose 1.6 percentage points to 35 percent, while 5.5 percent said they were unsure.
Lee's approval rating had stayed above 60 percent for seven consecutive weeks since the second week of March before dropping in the latest poll.
Realmeter said the decline was marked by a decline in support among centrist voters and vulnerable groups sensitive to the cost of living, citing mounting pressure from rising oil and consumer prices.
The pollster also attributed the fall to the recent controversy over Unification Minister Chung Dong-young's reference to North Korea's Kusong region as one of the sites hosting the country's uranium enrichment facilities, which Washington reportedly sees as a unilateral disclosure of information based on U.S.-shared intelligence.
The survey had a margin of error of 2 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.
In a separate survey conducted by the same pollster on 1,006 individuals aged 18 and over on Wednesday and Thursday, the approval rating for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea fell 2.7 percentage points from a week earlier to 48.6 percent.
The approval rating for the main opposition People Power Party rose 0.9 percentage point to 31.6 percent.
Source: Korea Times News
