With Approval Rating in the 30% Range, President Lee Jae-myung Cuts Overseas Trip Short After Just One Day

The overseas trip ended after just one day. President Lee Jae-myung headed home after hearing news of the suspension of the president of Poland's Constitutional Tribunal, injecting sudden turbulence into domestic politics.

What Drove the Abrupt End to the Trip

According to the presidential office, President Lee is cutting short his itinerary and returning home urgently over the suspension of the Polish constitutional court's chief justice. A decision by a president to cut short an overseas schedule on his own is rare. President Lee recently pushed back, saying, "Do you think I'm traveling abroad for leisure when I'm on IV drips and my nose is bleeding?" Against that backdrop, the cancellation is interpreted not as a simple schedule adjustment but as a weighty reflection of pressure from the domestic political situation.

The decisive factor was the approval rating. Surveys show the president's approval rating has slipped back into the 30% range. Given that a support base that had been solid in the early days of his presidency wavered in such a short period, the presidential office appears to have concluded that governing on the ground at home must come first.

Two Controversies Behind the Falling Approval Rating

The epicenter of the decline lies in two places. The first is the controversy over "inciting xenophobia" surrounding remarks and social media posts related to migrant workers and multicultural families. President Lee himself explained that "preferential treatment can become a pretext for far-right incitement against multicultural families," and said on social media that the postpartum care center benefit system would be "re-examined with fairness in mind if it stirs controversy over unreasonableness." While the remarks themselves aimed at the middle ground, by voicing concerns they left room for interpretation.

The Democratic Party moved to his defense, saying "President Lee has actually protected the human rights of migrant workers and local residents, and his meaning was distorted." Yet the approval numbers suggest that even among supporters of the ruling party, a sense of defection is detectable over whether the remarks crossed a line. The second is the controversy over disaster response missteps, including the golf outing with family members on the very day of the ceiling collapse accident in Daegu. The revelation that the presidential secretariat left six of ten documents related to the site of and response to disasters and accidents unanswered in parliamentary audits has only fueled a structure that breeds suspicion rather than information.

A Crossroads for the Presidency After the Return

The tasks awaiting the returning president are clear. First is closing out the remarks controversy. Just as President Lee drew the line on former lawmaker Rhyu Si-min's criticism of prosecutorial reform, saying "I do not want Rhyu Si-min punished," rifts within his own camp must be mended quickly. With criticism such as "it reeks of a fish market gone rotten" surfacing even in discussions of prosecutorial reform and criminal information requests, if internal defections are left unaddressed, the slide in approval ratings could become structural.

Next is restoring trust in disaster response. President Lee emphasized to Special Inspector General Choi Kil-su that "initial response and prevention are critical," and announced that from November, the second round of special investigations would be expanded, calling "entrenched corruption a crime that destroys the foundations of local autonomy and decentralization." The language of principle is sufficient. What remains is showing that those principles apply to himself as well. An explanation of the six unanswered disaster-related documents cannot be left out either.

His attendance for the first time as sitting president at the fourth-anniversary memorial of the Itaewon disaster, declaring his resolve to prevent recurrence, and the fact that North Korea stopped its noise provocations the day after South Korea halted loudspeaker broadcasts are assets the president can still draw on. The problem is that the 82.1 trillion won budget proposal for next year, expanded by 12.8%—93 trillion won—over this year, invites criticism of "hyper-expansionary" fiscal policy. Pushing fiscal expansion with approval in the 30% range makes the persuasive work of securing public consent more important than ever.

The return is not an end but a beginning. The coming weeks of communication, personnel, and fiscal direction will determine whether the 30% approval rating is a floor or a midpoint. The re-examination and expanded investigation timelines the president himself announced will likely be the first test.