Amid policy disarray over livelihoods, national security and government appointments, public sentiment toward President Lee Jae-myung and the ruling party is growing colder. In a Realmeter survey conducted from the 6th to the 8th, the president's job approval rating fell 2.2 percentage points from the previous week to 35.2%. In a survey conducted on the 7th and 8th, support for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea dropped 7.0 percentage points to 35.5%, falling behind the People Power Party at 41.3% within the margin of error. Support for the ruling bloc declined across the country except in the Honam region, and sentiment is cool not only among conservatives but also among moderates. This is not a matter of ideology but the result of the government and ruling party failing to offer clear answers on issues directly tied to daily life, including surging jeonse (a lump-sum deposit lease) and monthly rent prices, concerns over public safety, and North Korean threats.
President Lee is attempting to rally his base through social media. He posted 116 messages last month and has published multiple posts on current issues every day this month. But the erosion of public support is not due to a lack of policy promotion. It is because he has failed to deliver on the "president for all" and "flexible, pragmatic government" he promised at his inauguration. The ruling bloc has pushed through policies tilted toward its hardline supporters. Prominent examples include the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigative authority, which heightened concerns about public safety and gaps in investigations; a real estate policy that nearly branded even owners of a single home who do not live in it as speculative buyers; and the so-called Yellow Envelope Law, which fueled confusion at industrial work sites. Its deferential response to North Korea's repeated threats and provocations has also disappointed moderates.
The president must now go beyond social media and answer with results on livelihoods and security that most citizens can accept. He must calm housing price instability by stimulating private as well as public housing supply, and must resolve leadership vacancies at prosecution and investigative agencies along with shortages of front-line personnel to contain the fallout from the hasty rollout of the new criminal justice system. For some of the North Korea and security officials at the center of unusual strains in the South Korea-U.S. alliance, the government should issue a clear warning against any recurrence and consider replacing them if such incidents happen again. In particular, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said at a press meeting on the 12th that "an alliance shares values, but interests can sometimes conflict," offering rationalization rather than self-reflection — an attitude the public finds hard to accept. Only by taking the public's warning seriously and thoroughly overhauling state affairs can the government and ruling party restore public trust.