SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in's approval rating fell to the lowest since he took office in May last year due to negative social issues, a weekly poll showed Thursday.
According to the Realmeter survey, support for Moon dipped 1.4 percentage points over the week to 48.1 percent this week, the lowest since his inauguration.
The decline came as various negative issues came out, such as the derailment accident of a bullet train, a taxi driver who set himself on fire to protest against the online carpool service, and the decision to keep Samsung BioLogics listed on the main bourse despite its accounting fraud worth billions of U.S. dollars.
The negative assessment on Moon's management of state affairs gained 1.7 percentage points to 46.9 percent this week.
The result was based on a poll of 1,508 voters conducted from Monday to Wednesday. It had 2.5 percentage points in margin of error with a 95 percent confidence level.
Support for Moon's ruling Democratic Party shed 0.5 percentage points to 37.7 percent, staying below 40 percent for the fourth consecutive week.
The main conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party won 22.8 percent of support this week, down 1.9 percentage points from the previous week.
The minor progressive Justice Party gained 7.4 percent in support scores, followed by the minor conservative Bareun Future Party with 6.9 percent of support and the center-left Party for Democracy and Peace with 2.7 percent.