Seoul, Dec 13 (EFE).- Embattled South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s popularity rating has fallen to a new record low of 11 percent following his decision to declare martial law last week, according to a poll released Friday.
The survey, conducted by Gallup Korea on 1,002 adults over Dec. 10-12, shows that positive evaluations of Yoon’s performance fell 5 percentage points from the previous week’s levels.
Negative evaluations of Yoon rose to 85 percent, while 75 percent of participants responded that they support the president’s impeachment and 21 percent said they reject impeachment.
The National Assembly (parliament) will vote on Saturday on a motion presented by the opposition liberal Democratic Party (DP) to impeach Yoon.
Following the failed impeachment bid last Saturday, due to the majority of Yoon’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) boycotting the vote, the second impeachment vote looks more likely to succeed as a sufficient number of PPP lawmakers appear willing to support the motion.
On Thursday, the president made a televised speech defending his “inevitable” decision to declare martial law in order to “protect” democracy and once again called the opposition an anti-state entity.
A poll released Thursday by Realmeter but conducted before Yoon made his controversial speech showed a similar result, with around 75 percent of respondents supporting his impeachment.
In Friday’s Gallup poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points and a confidence rate of 95 percent, only 27 percent of those who identified themselves as supporters of the PPP supported the impeachment, while 66 percent rejected it outright.
In contrast, among DP supporters, 97 percent agreed with impeachment and only 3 percent were against it.
Regarding support for the two main parties, the PPP’s support fell by 3 percentage points to 24 percent, while the DP’s support rose by 3 points to 40 percent, which is the largest gap between the two parties since Yoon came to power in May 2022. EFE
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