Election Scandal Presses South Korean President's Satisfaction Level

JAKARTA - The public satisfaction level with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung dropped to 57 percent after being dragged into the impact of the ballot shortage scandal in the June 3 local elections, according to the results of the National Barometer Survey (NBS).

As many as 57 percent of respondents assessed the president's performance positively. This figure fell nine percentage points compared to the previous survey conducted in the third week of May.

In the second half of May, the level of satisfaction with Lee was recorded at 66 percent.

Meanwhile, negative assessments of the president also increased by nine percentage points to 33 percent.

Support for the ruling party, the Democratic Party of Korea, also declined. The party's support rate was 41 percent, down four percentage points from the previous survey.

In contrast, support for the main opposition party, the People Power Party, increased by five percentage points to 25 percent.

The survey was conducted on June 8-10 by Embrain Public, Kstat Research, Korea Research, and Hankook Research on 1,001 South Korean adults. The survey has a maximum margin of error of 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.

In last week's local elections, the Democratic Party won 12 of 16 major elections for the mayor of major cities and provincial governors. However, the party was judged to have failed to win a number of important contests, including the Seoul Mayor election and the Busan by-election.

Political scandals emerged after the local elections held on June 3 due to a lack of ballots at a number of polling stations.

According to the South Korean National Election Commission (NEC), the voting process was temporarily halted at 26 polling stations across the country, with most locations in Songpa District, Seoul.

The incident triggered widespread criticism of NEC, leading to the resignation of its chairman, Rho Tae-ak, and sparked days of protests at the vote counting center in Songpa District.

The demonstrators demanded that the election results be declared invalid and the vote be repeated. The police then searched the NEC office and a number of its branch offices in order to investigate alleged violations of election laws and administrative negligence.

Investigators also traced the causes of the shortage of ballot papers.

The government and relevant authorities have agreed to prepare a massive reform of the electoral system to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.