Prime Minister Kim Min-seok, referring to a situation where President Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party of Korea's approval ratings are falling at the same time, said it is "a time when the party must do much better with a far greater sense of responsibility."
On the 22nd at Government Complex Seoul, Kim answered this way at a press briefing when asked about the downward trend in approval ratings after the June 3 local elections.
That day, Realmeter, commissioned by Energy Economy News, surveyed 2,517 voters nationwide from the 15th to the 19th and released the results showing that the positive assessment of President Lee's job performance fell 4.8 percentage points from the previous week to 46.7%, declining for five straight weeks. The negative assessment rose 5.5 percentage points to 49.7%, marking, for the first time since the inauguration, a dead cross in which the negative surpassed the positive by 3.0 percentage points.
As for party support, the same organization surveyed 1,001 voters on the 18th and 19th, finding the Democratic Party of Korea at 40.1% and the People Power Party at 42.3%. Compared with the previous survey, the Democratic Party of Korea rose 2.1 percentage points and the People Power Party fell 2.0 percentage points, narrowing the gap between the two parties to within the margin of error.
Kim said, "The government and the ruling party are one body. In the United States, the president personally campaigns, but in Korea, by law, the president, the prime minister, or a Minister cannot personally campaign," adding, "If the government manages state affairs well and builds approval, it hands it off to the party during the campaign period like a relay, and the party turns that into election results and hands it back to the government."
He assessed that over the past year or so the president's leadership had driven job approval, but since the election both job approval and party support have been trending down together. He added, "It could be that the election results are dragging down both the party and government approval ratings, or that the party's declining support is pulling down job approval."
Kim said, "Now is precisely the time when perfect unity and cooperation between the party and the government are needed, and when the party must support the president's governance more broadly and deeply than before the election."