President Park Geun-hye’s approval rating skidded to the lowest level since she took office, a poll showed Monday, amid snowballing allegations of political meddling by her aides and their power struggle with her brother.

According to the survey of 2,500 adults nationwide by pollster Realmeter, 39.7 percent of the respondents approved Park’s job performance. It marked a 6.6 percentage point fall from the previous week’s result.

The latest figure is the lowest ever for Park’s weekly approval rating measured by Realmeter since her inauguration in February 2013.

Those who said they disapprove of Park’s performance accounted for 52.1 percent, a 6.3 percentage point increase from the previous result, it noted.

The plunge appears to be caused by the ongoing controversy over the presidential document leaked to the media last month, the polling agency said.

According to the internal presidential document, Jeong Yun-hoe, who served as an adviser for President Park when she was a lawmaker, held regular meetings with several incumbent senior presidential officials to influence state affairs, including personnel matters.

While Park dismissed the accounts in the document as groundless, speculations have since mounted that the leakage was at least partly caused by the behind-the-scenes power game between Jeong and Park’s younger brother, Ji-man. An intensive probe into the case is underway.

The ruling Saenuri Party also saw its approval rating fall 3.7 percentage points to 38.9 percent, while the figure for the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy edged up 0.2 percentage point to 22.9 percent.

The survey, conducted last Monday through Friday, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. In the similar poll taken by the Gallup Korea last week, Park earned 41 percent of support, drawing close to her lowest-ever rating in that poll of 40 percent. (Yonhap)