“FTA Effect” Fades Away: Roh’s Approval Ratings Down 6%

President Roh’s job approval ratings dropped by 6.1% to 28.7% in a month. The figures are the result of a survey commissioned to the Korea Research Center (KRC) by this newspaper of 1,000 adults on May 30-31 titled, “The 6th Public Poll Related to the Presidential Election in 2007.” In the fifth round of the survey on April 28, the approval ratings stood at 34.8%.

The number of those who did not approve of the president’s job rose by 9.8% to 65.6%. The positive ratings spiked to 34.8% on April 28th from 24.6% on March 29th, right after the conclusion of the Korea-U.S. FTA.

When the government announced its plan on May 22 to merge and abolish briefings and article delivery rooms run by government offices under its “Press Support Advancement Initiative,” 55.8% of respondents said that the measure is an infringement of free speech rights. Some 34.5% agreed on the need for the measure.

An official from the KRC said, “Negative public sentiment toward the integration and shutting down of the briefings and article delivery rooms, along with the frequent remarks about the next presidential election by President Roh, seem to have affected the approval ratings.”

The top presidential hopefuls are Lee Myung-bak, with a 43.4% rating and Park Geun-hye with a 22.7% rating, both up slightly from 41.7% and 19.3% in the last poll. They are followed by Sohn Hak-gyu (6.7%), the former governor of Gyeonggi Province, Roh Hoi-chan (1.6%), a lawmaker of the Democratic Labor Party, Chung Dong-young (1.4%), the former chief of the Uri Party, Han Myung-sook (1.4%), a former prime minister, Kwon Young-gil (1.4%), a lawmaker of the Democratic Labor Party, and Lee Hae-chan (1.1%), a former prime minister.

If Lee Myung-bak from the Grand National Party (GNP) and Sohn Hak-gyu, who split from the ruling party, ran for president today, Lee would capture 69.3% of the vote (21.1% would vote against him), while if Park Geun-hye from the GNP were to run against Sohn today, she would earn 56.7% of the vote (34.1% would vote against her) in a virtual presidential race. The survey was done on the phone and the sample error rate is ±3.1% point with a 95% level of confidence.

mindy@donga.com