In a public opinion poll on perceptions of the merits and demerits of past presidents, former President Yoon Suk-yeol surpassed even former President Chun Doo-hwan to rank No. 1 as the president who "did many things wrong." In the 2021 survey, Chun ranked No. 1 in the same category.
Korea Gallup surveyed 1,000 people aged 18 or older from the 25th to the 27th on evaluations of past presidents and released the results on the 28th, finding that the response that former President Yoon "did many things wrong" was 77%, the highest among all presidents.
Only 12% said he "did many things well."
Following former President Yoon, the share saying "did many things wrong" was high in the order of Chun Doo-hwan (68%), Park Geun-hye (65%), and Roh Tae-woo (50%).
Former Presidents Lee Myung-bak (46%), Moon Jae-in (44%), and Rhee Syng-man (40%) were also evaluated as having more demerits than merits.
Among past presidents, the former president who received the highest evaluation as having done many things well was Roh Moo-hyun (68%). The response that he "did many things poorly" was 15%.
Next came Park Chung-hee (62%), Kim Dae-jung (60%), and Kim Young-sam (42%) in response rate for "did many things well."
Korea Gallup, which has conducted the same-topic poll five times from 2012 to this one, said in the materials, "In 10 years, positive views of former Presidents Kim Young-sam and Lee Myung-bak have increased and negative views have decreased," and noted, "It appears that some kind of re-evaluation has taken place."
In this survey, former Presidents Yun Po-sun and Choi Kyu-hah, whose terms were short, were excluded.
The survey was conducted by interviewer-administered calls to randomly generated mobile virtual numbers. The sampling error is ±3.1 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, the contact rate is 44.9%, and the response rate is 11.9%. Details are available on the website of the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission.