President Park Geun-hye appears to have won back some of her old supporters, after her emotional apology Friday. Her freefall in popularity has stopped, a recent survey showed, with an uptick in the president’s core support base of older and right-wing voters.

According to local pollster Realmeter, Park’s daily approval ratings have gone downhill, dropping from around 30 percent, before a scandal involving her close confidante Choi Soon-sil broke out, to just 10.2 percent last Wednesday.

The conservative president, however, stopped her losing streak in polls Thursday, registering a slight uptick -- 0.7 percentage point -- in approval ratings to reach 10.9 percent. Then on Friday, after her nationally televised mea culpa, the daily reading inched further up to 12.7 percent. 


“Park’s second apology, in which she expressed her willingness to undergo investigation, appears to have consolidated support behind her,” Realmeter explained.

The president saw her support among voters aged 60 or older rise by nearly 5 percentage points after the apology -- from 23.5 percent on Thursday to 28.4 percent on Friday.

Among supporters of the conservative Saenuri Party, those who approve of the job Park is doing rose from 36.9 percent to 42.6 percent.

On a weekly basis, however, the Realmeter result also showed that Park has become the least popular of all democratically-elected presidents in South Korea.

Her approval rating for the first week of November stood at 11.5 percent, down 7.5 percentage points from the previous week.

The previous record was 12.6 percent held by former President Roh Moo-hyun.

Last week, Gallup Korea put Park’s approval rating at 5 percent, the lowest ever for any Korean president. 


By Korea Herald staff / (khnews@heraldcorp.com)