Park’s Approval Rating Moves Up After Visit to Iran

President Park Geun-hye invited a group of children to the Blue House to mark Children’s Day. (image: Yonhap)

SEOUL, May 6 (Korea Bizwire) – President Park Geun-hye’s job approval rating moved up on the back of public support for her historic visit to Iran, a poll showed Thursday.

The poll released by local pollster Realmeter showed 35.6 percent approval of the job Park is doing, up 4.6 percentage points from a week earlier.

The poll attributed the jump to increased media coverage of Park’s recent trip to Tehran, where she met with her Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, and Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The poll also found that those who disapproved of Park’s job performance came to 59.8 percent, down 4.6 percentage points from the previous week.

Separately, the approval rating of the Saenuri Party came to 31.8 percent, up 3.4 percentage points from the previous week.

This week’s record for the party marks the first time that it hovered above 30 percent since its crushing defeat in last month’s parliamentary elections.

In the April 13 polls, the Saenuri Party grabbed only 122 out of the 300 total seats, and lost its parliamentary majority and its status as the largest political party.

The approval rating for the main opposition Minjoo Party, which won 123 seats, edged up by a marginal 0.1 percentage point to 27.7 percent.

The splinter People’s Party, which won 38 seats, came to 21.6 percent, down 3.3 percentage points from the previous week.

The telephone survey was conducted between Monday and Wednesday, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

(Yonhap)