In South Korea, the weekly public opinion polls on the approval ratings of the president and political parties, as well as presidential candidates, are conducted by numerous research institutions. Their results make the headlines of most newspapers all the time. Thus, the results have a significant impact on the people’s understanding of politics and influence their voting behavior.
President Moon Jae-in’s approval ratings have dropped from earlier in his term to around the 30 to 40 percentage level, but the figure is still higher than that of former presidents late in their term. Moon’s supporters and the ruling Democratic Party (DP) use such results to promote their success, while conservatives doubt whether such results are neutral, objective, and not manipulated.
This controversy has continued for a long time but it was highlighted during the end of President Park Geun-hye’s term, when her approval rating dropped below 5 percent. This eventually led the National Assembly to impeach her despite protests from conservatives that it lacked due process. At that time, hundreds of thousands of protestors rallied in central Seoul to show their support for Park. They argued that the public opinion polls cannot be trusted when considering the size of the crowds gathering in support of her.
Amid this controversy, one video has gone viral in South Korea. The uploader took a video on his phone with the speakerphone on when replying to an automated voice survey. The surveyor first asked, “Do you think President Moon Jae-in is doing a good job or not?” It asked the respondent to press 1 for “doing very well,” 2 for “somewhat well,” 3 for “somewhat bad,” 4 for “very bad,” and 5 for “not sure.” The respondent pressed 4.
The next question asked what political party the respondent supported. The respondent pressed 2 for the main opposition People Power Party. Then the surveyor said that, “We are sorry, but you are not a subject of this survey and we will not conduct a survey with you anymore. Once again, we are very sorry.”
After this video was uploaded, there were many comments posted that said they had similar experiences. “Are they saying they are not interested in surveying people who do not support President Moon and support the PPP?” one comment read. “I doubt how accurate the approval ratings of the president and political parties are when seeing this kind of blatantly biased survey. If it is true, it is almost like manipulating the results.”
The National Election Commission (NEC) on August 20 announced that they will investigate to see whether this issue has a negative impact on the people’s confidence in the public opinion polls. “The video is very short, so we are unable to identify the company who conducted this survey just yet,” an official at the NEC told the news media. “We will investigate whether there were other companies that conducted surveys in this matter. We also think there is a possibility that this survey was conducted by a certain political party, so we will look into this closely.” The NEC added that it will refer the case to the investigation agency if they fail to identify the issue by themselves.
This is not the first time for the public to question the reliability or neutrality of surveys in South Korea. For example, the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, a constitutional institution established to advise the president on the formulation of a peaceful unification policy and chaired by the president, conducted a survey through the Korea Society Opinion Institute in November and June on the joint military exercises with the United States. In the November survey, 66.5 percent of respondents said that the exercises should be conducted as scheduled, while 28.7 percent said they should be postponed or reduced in scale. However, in the June survey, the results for supporting the drills (46.6 percent) and opposing them (47.3 percent) were almost the same.
One of the biggest reasons behind these different results is because they phrased the questions in different ways. In November, the question was as follows: “During the first half of 2021, the new administration will begin in the United States and North Korea will hold its 8th party conference. When considering these facts, what do you think we should do about the joint military exercises with the United States?”
In June, the question changed to: “President Moon Jae-in acknowledged that there are difficulties in conducting large-scale joint military exercises due to COVID-19. What do you think about temporarily suspending the joint military exercises to make progress in inter-Korean relations?”
Conservative news media outlets have argued that this was manipulating public opinion by using phrases like the “COVID-19 situation” and “progress in inter-Korean relations.” Last week, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper pointed out this fact and compared it to the amendment to the existing Press Arbitration Act, which was eventually passed at a plenary session of the National Assembly’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee by DP lawmakers and after a protest by opposition lawmakers. The bill would impose a five-fold increase in penalties on media outlets that make false or fraudulent news reports. Both local and international media associations raised concerns that the bill would work to clamp down on media critics of the current administration and called it authoritarian. The Chosun Ilbo said, “The ruling party is saying that they should shut down media outlets that publish fake news intentionally and maliciously, and push for the new media law.” It added, “However, absurd public opinion polls that mislead the public sentiment are more serious form of fake news, since South Korea is a country where public opinion polls have a high impact on elections and the policymaking process.”
“The constitutional institution is spreading strange opinion surveys and the ruling party’s lawmakers are playing with them.” The newspaper was referring to the 74 leftist lawmakers who issued a joint statement calling for the postponement of the military exercises citing the survey results.
Earlier this week, Park Si-young, the head of a public opinion research firm called Wingkorea Consulting, made controversial comments that made people question the neutrality of the company’s survey results. Park, who was an administrative director for President Roh Mo-hyun’s public opinion research team, called former prosecutor general and leading conservative presidential candidate Yoon Seok-youl a “time bomb” who will detonate in mid-September since “he is so short-sighted.” Park, on the other hand, praised Gyeonggi Governor Lee Jae-myung, a leading DP presidential candidate, by describing him as a “person with no authoritative mind” and an “easygoing man that makes people feel comfortable being around him.”
After the news media and some conservative politicians raised the issue of the head of a research firm making such political comments, Park responded on his Facebook, “They are just so stupid to think that we can manipulate the public opinion poll results… How is it possible to let my political stance get involved in conducting mobile phone-based random surveys?”
