Lee's approval rating soars for 5th consecutive week: poll
The approval rating of the liberal president, who took office on June 4, came to 64.6 percent, according to the poll on 2,513 South Korean adults conducted by Realmeter from July 7-11. The figure was up 2.5 percentage points from the previous week.
Those who disapproved of Lee's performance amounted to 30 percent of all respondents, down 1.4 percentage points from the previous week.
Realmeter noted that the Lee administration "has managed to consolidate the uptrend" in its popularity, adding that Lee's approval rating was buoyed by the arrest of Yoon on Thursday morning, four months after he was released on a court order. Yoon is largely considered a mastermind behind the Dec. 3 martial law imposition in an apparent bid to strengthen his grip on state affairs.
Ongoing revelations of Yoon's misdeeds during his term, uncovered by the special counsel investigation, as well as Lee's nominations for key government posts, contributed to Lee's rise in popularity, according to Realmeter.
Lee's approval rating reached 58.6 percent in the second week of June and has steadily climbed over the past month.
The same set of polls on Monday also put the ruling Democratic Party of Korea's popularity at 56.2 percent, the highest point in about seven years. The figure was also 2.4 percentage points higher than the previous week. The support rating of the main opposition People Power Party hit 24.3 percent, the lowest recorded since it rebranded itself as the People Power Party in September 2020.
A separate poll conducted by Gallup Korea, however, indicated Friday that President Lee's popularity rating stood at 63 percent in the second week of July, down by 2 percentage points compared to the previous week. Gallup Korea's poll showed that the popularity of Lee, his ruling party and the major opposition party had all dropped.
Lee visited North Chungcheong Province on Monday afternoon to deliver his remarks to civil servant trainees. There, Lee stressed a need for a civil servant to be loyal to the country and its population, adding that citizens' lives hinge on each civil servant's job performance. Lee was the first South Korean president to have officially met the civil servant trainees in 20 years, after the late former liberal president Roh Moo-hyun did so in 2005.
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