South Korean President’s Popularity Drops After Open Mic Mishap
Seoul, Sep 26 (EFE).- The popularity of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has fallen after a mishap that occurred during his visit to New York last week, when he was captured by an open microphone apparently using foul language, according to a poll released Monday.
Yoon’s approval rate, already low since the beginning of his term in May, stood at 34.6 percent Friday – when the Realmeter company carried out the sampling – which is 0.2 percent less compared to another survey conducted by the same company three days earlier.
On Thursday, while Yoon attended an event in New York for the Global Fund, an organization that fights the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, microphones caught him talking to his advisers.
The recording is not very clear due to ambient noise, but some subtitles produced by the MBC television network sparked controversy, since according to his interpretation, Yoon is heard saying “if these bastards in congress don’t approve, poor (United States President Joe) Biden is going to look very bad.”
The South Korean presidential office has denied that this was what Yoon said and the president himself told the media Monday that this type of false news damages the bilateral relationship with the US, the country’s main military ally and second largest trading partner.
The presidential office said Yoon was referring to the South Korean National Assembly and its parliamentarians, adding that if they rejected (the conjugation of this verb in Korean may sound similar to “Biden”) his proposal to donate $ 100 million to the Global Fund he I was going to be in a bad place.
Opposition politicians said that even if this second version is true, Yoon has not apologized for using a derogatory term to refer to parliamentarians.
The South Korean government is even studying whether to take action against the MBC network, according to the Yonhap news agency. EFE
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