President Moon Jae-in continued to enjoy record high approval ratings this week, though the outcome of the latest poll released Sunday showed a slight drop.

   According to the poll conducted by the Korea Society Opinion Institute, 85.9 percent of those surveyed said the new president was doing a good job in managing state affairs.

   The reading marked a 3.5 percentage point drop from a month before.

   Still, it marked one of the highest for all presidents here in his or her first year in office. Moon came into office on May 10 after winning a presidential by-election caused by the ouster of his conservative predecessor Park Geun-hye over a bribery scandal.

   The poll was conducted on 1,010 adults throughout the country on Friday and Saturday. It carried a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

   Moon garnered an approval rating of over 70 percent in all age brackets with those in their 30s showing the highest approval rate of 93.6 percent and people aged 60 years or more the lowest at 75 percent.

   Those who disapproved of Moon's job as the chief executive accounted for 11.8 percent of all respondents, up 3.3 percentage points from the previous month.

   More than eight out of every 10 people also approved of Moon's recent visit to the United States, where he and his US

counterpart Donald Trump agreed to punish North Korea for its provocations but also seek a resumption of dialogue with the communist regime to end its nuclear ambition peacefully.

   When asked if the outcome of Moon's US visit will serve the country's national interest in the future, 82.8 percent said yes while 15.4 percent answered no, according to the survey.

   Also, 78.1 percent of all respondents said they approved Moon's key North Korea policy to seek sanctions and engagement in parallel, while 18.7 percent said they do not approve.

   With Moon's approval rating remaining at a record high level, so did that of his ruling Democratic Party.

   Out of all respondents, 52.2 percent said they supported the ruling party, down 1.5 percentage points from a month earlier.

   The approval rating of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party gained 0.5 percentage point on-month to 9.3 percent while that of the splinter opposition Bareun Party climbed 1.6 percentage points to 6.6 percent.

   The liberal People's Party, on the other hand, saw its approval rating plunge 2.9 percentage points to a record low of 3.8 percent, apparently due to the latest scandal involving its party members, who have admitted to or are suspected of fabricating evidence against Moon and his son that the president had illicitly helped his son find a full-time job at a public agency while serving as the chief of staff under the late former President Roh Moo-hyun. (Yonhap)