SEOUL, May 17 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in's approval rating stayed high this week despite the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s suspension of high-level inter-Korean talks, a weekly survey showed Thursday.
According to the Realmeter survey, support for Moon was 74.5 percent this week, down 1.8 percentage points from the previous week.
The result was based on a poll of 1,503 voters conducted from Monday to Wednesday. It had 2.5 percentage points in margin of error with a 95 percent confidence level.
Moon's support scores fell slightly but it hovered high compared with his impeached predecessor Park Geun-hye, whose highest approval rating had never topped 70 percent while in office.
The slight fall came as the DPRK made a pre-dawn cancellation Wednesday of the agreed-upon high-level dialogue with South Korea, which was originally scheduled to be held on the same day at the border village of Panmunjom.
Pyongyang cancelled the talks, citing the ongoing South Korea-U.S. air combat exercises that mobilized around 100 aircraft including the U.S. F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets. The F-22 is a radar-evading fighter for an attack purpose.
Despite the cancellation, expectations remained high for a continued detente mood on the Korean Peninsula. Moon and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un met on April 27 at Panmunjom, agreeing to complete denuclearization and the turn of the current armistice agreement into a peace treaty by the end of this year.
Kim is scheduled to hold a historic first-ever summit with U.S. President Donald Trump on June 12 in Singapore.
Moon's ruling Democratic Party kept its top post with 53.8 percent in approval rating this week. It was followed by the main opposition Liberty Korea Party which won 19.6 percent of support.
The minor conservative Bareun Future Party had 5.7 percent in approval scores, while the minor progressive Justice Party garnered 5.5 percent of support. The center-left Party for Democracy and Peace won 3.7 percent of support.
