55 pct expect Yoon to do good job: poll

Politics 14:36 March 25, 2022

SEOUL, March 25 (Yonhap) -- Fifty-five percent of South Koreans expect President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol will do a good job after taking office, a survey showed Friday, though his predecessors had approval ratings of about 80 percent around the same time after the election.

The Gallup Korea survey of 1,000 adults conducted between Tuesday and Thursday also showed that 40 percent do not expect Yoon to do well on state affairs. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.

Yoon's approval rating was much lower than those of his predecessors.

In polls conducted within two weeks after their elections, 87 percent had positive expectations of President Moon Jae-in, while former Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye received 84 percent and 78 percent, respectively.

Yoon was elected in the March 9 election with 48.56 percent of the vote, beating his Democratic Party rival, Lee Jae-myung, by 0.73 percentage point, the smallest margin ever.

Asked about Yoon's plan to move the presidential office out of Cheong Wa Dae, 53 percent said they are against the relocation, while 36 percent said they support the idea, the survey showed.

On the issue of whether former President Lee should be pardoned, 39 percent said they support granting clemency to him, while 50 percent said they are against it.

Meanwhile, Moon's approval rating rose 2 percentage points from last week to 44 percent, while his disapproval rating fell 1 point to 51 percent.

Asked why they rated Moon's performance positively, 13 percent cited his job in diplomatic and international relations, while 10 percent picked his response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Of those who gave negative score to Moon's performance, 19 percent picked Moon's non-cooperative manner to the president-elect and the incoming government as the main reason, followed by Moon's real estate policies with 16 percent.