South Korean President Lee Jae Myung's political honeymoon has screeched to a halt over market instability, "soaring" housing prices, and other controversies.
Lee's approval rating hit its lowest level since he came to office in June 2025, according to an August poll of 2,514 voters, with just 43.3 per cent of respondents expressing approval. Realmeter, the polling agency, tagged Lee's peak approval rating at 65.4 per cent in April 2026.
Realmeter wrote that "controversies over changes to real estate taxes, revisions to the Criminal Procedure Act, [...] extreme heat, and economic uncertainty combined to drive away more supporters."
Respondents also didn't appreciate Lee's recent remarks about the supposed role of the Korea Military Academy — labelled the "Korean West Point" — in the country's past military coups.
Live from Seoul, it's capital flight
Economic and market uncertainty persists in South Korea, dragging down Lee's approval rating. A former retail investor himself, Lee has encouraged Koreans to rally the market and invest. He even told a press conference, when the Kospi — South Korea's benchmark index — was at 8,000, that “the market has risen faster than I expected, but I still think it is undervalued."
The Kospi later skyrocketed past 9,300, more than doubling from January 2026. But the index now sits at 6,813. Foreign investors withdrew US$30.5 billion in June — the largest capital outflow in 25 years — and Korean retail investors, looking abroad for stability, purchased US$4.6 billion of U.S. stocks in July.
The stock market's volatility has led to the "rise of stock-themed entertainment," according to The Korea Herald.
Kim Won-hun, of "Saturday Night Live Korea" fame, recently launched a TV show about navigating the market for the first time (and losing 24 million South Korean won, or C$24,000, within his first two weeks of trading).
