President Park Geun-hye’s approval ratings has fallen by 6 percentage point to 34 percent this week, mainly due to the Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak, a survey showed Friday.

Gallup Korea said that their latest survey of 1,005 adults nationwide on June 2-4 showed that 55 percent of them disapproved of Park’s administration. The other 10 percent chose to withhold their comment.

This marked a 6 percentage point decline of the approval ratings, and a 8 percentage point increase of the disapproval, from last week, Gallup said.

Park has seen her ratings remain at 39-40 percent in the past five weeks. The latest drop is equivalent to the ratings recorded at the height of the so-called Sung Woan-jong scandal in April, when eight Saenuri Party members including former and incumbent aides of Park were alleged to have been involved with illegal money exchange. Two of them, including former Prime Minister Lee Wan-koo currently face indictment.

The largest change was seen among women, with 34 percent of them saying they approved compared to last week’s 42 percent. By occupation, housewives also recorded the largest change, with 39 percent of them approving of Park compared to 55 percent a week before.

Gallup said 16 percent of those who disapproved of Park cited “lack of communication,” while 14 percent said “the government’s lax countermeasures against MERS” as the reason.

Another survey by Realmeter showed that seven out of 10 did not trust the government’s MERS countermeasures.

In the survey conducted on 500 adults on June 4, 68.3 percent said they did not trust the government’s management. Only 25.9 percent said they trusted the government.

The distrust ratio was high among each age group, with 89.5 percent of those in their 30s being critical of the government, as well as 74.3 percent in their 40s, 73.7 percent in their 20s and 63.8 percent in their 50s.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)