Election scandal drags down South Korean president's approval rating

In the second half of May, President Lee’s approval rating was recorded at 66 per cent. Meanwhile, negative assessments of the president also rose by nine percentage points to 33 per cent. Support for the ruling party, the Democratic Party of Korea, has also experienced a decline. The party’s support level stands at 41 per cent, down four percentage points compared to the previous survey. Conversely, support for the main opposition party, the People Power Party, increased by five percentage points to 25 per cent. The survey was conducted on 8–10 June by Embrain Public, Kstat Research, Korea Research, and Hankook Research involving 1,001 adult South Korean citizens. The survey has a maximum margin of error of 3.1 percentage points at a 95 per cent confidence level. In last week’s local elections, the Democratic Party won 12 out of 16 major races for the posts of metropolitan mayor and provincial governor. However, the party was deemed to have failed in winning several crucial contests, including the Seoul mayoral election and a by-election in Busan. A political scandal emerged after the local elections held on 3 June due to a shortage of ballot papers at a number of polling stations. According to the National Election Commission (NEC), the voting process had to be temporarily halted at 26 polling stations nationwide, with the majority of the locations being in Songpa District, Seoul. The incident sparked widespread criticism of the NEC, leading to the resignation of its chairman, Rho Tae-ak, and triggering days of protests at the ballot counting centre in Songpa District. Demonstrators demanded that the election results be declared void and the vote be repeated. The police subsequently raided the NEC office along with several of its branch offices as part of an investigation into alleged violations of election law and administrative negligence. Investigators are also probing the cause of the ballot paper shortage. The government and relevant authorities have agreed on drafting a major reform of the electoral administration system to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.