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Lee's approval rating falls for first time in 6 weeks: Poll

Published: 02 Mar. 2026, 13:19

President Lee Jae Myung speaks at a dinner reception with the Korean community in Singapore in the city state on March 1. [YONHAP]

President Lee Jae Myung's approval rating fell slightly last week from a week earlier, marking its first decline in six weeks, a survey showed on Monday.

Lee's approval rating stood at 57.1 percent, down 1.1 percentage points from the previous week, according to the survey by Realmeter and commissioned by a local business news outlet. Of those surveyed, 38.2 percent did not approve of Lee, up 1 percentage point over the cited period.

Realmeter partly attributed the drop in approval rating, which came despite positive financial and economic indicators, to recent social debates over the fairness of the government's push to merge major cities and provinces and lower the age for criminal punishment.

Lee has proposed merging the central city of Daejeon and the surrounding province of South Chungcheong as a way to help balance regional development beyond the Seoul metropolitan area.

The latest survey was conducted on 2,507 adults from Feb. 23 to Friday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, with a confidence level of 95 percent.

In a separate survey conducted by the same pollster on 1,002 individuals aged 18 and over on Thursday and Friday, the approval rating for the ruling Democratic Party fell 1.5 percentage points from a week earlier to 47.1 percent.

The approval rating for the main opposition People Power Party rose 1.2 percentage points to 33.8 percent.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, with a confidence level of 95 percent.

Yonhap