On about the 9th day, there will be a press conference without any specific topic for questions and answers in order to resolve the image of incompetence and enhance communication. The atmosphere is expected to focus on what keywords will emerge from the President’s remarks. According to political circles, President Yoon Suk-yeol is expected to hold an official press conference on the 9th in anticipation of the 2nd anniversary of his inauguration on May 10. This official press conference will be the first in 1 year and 9 months since the 100th day press conference after his inauguration.
Hong Cheol-ho, the Secretary for Political Affairs at the presidential office, appeared on Yonhap News TV on the 3rd and mentioned that they are considering the 9th as the most appropriate date to hold the press conference and not go beyond the inauguration date of the 10th. He also stated that the President will likely speak a lot about what the public is curious about and is expected to talk a lot about future strategies.
It’s anticipated that President Yoon will follow a similar format as the 100-day press conference, where he will give a speech for about 20 minutes and later take questions from reporters for approximately 33 minutes. There will likely be no restrictions on the topics of the questions asked. Many in the political circles attribute the recent losses by the People Power Party in the general elections to various issues such as the scandal involving Kim Geon-hee, the controversy surrounding Lee Jong-seob and Hwang Sang-moo, the green onion controversy, internal conflicts, and the 51-minute speech, which have fueled the image of incompetence regarding the President.
In the 100-day press conference, it was criticized for being difficult to achieve sufficient communication as the President only allotted 19 minutes for the speech and there were controversies over pre-arranged questions by spokespersons instead of the President selecting the questioners on site. President Yoon has been struggling to regain his approval ratings since the defeat in the general elections.
In a national survey conducted last month from the 29th to the 1st through 100% mobile phone interviews by Embrain Public, Case Research, Korea Research, and Han Research, only 27% of respondents evaluated President Yoon’s governance as ‘well done’ (very well done + well done), while 64% gave negative evaluations as ‘being done wrong’ (very poorly done + poorly done).
Within the ruling party, the majority of advice is to transform the upcoming press conference into an opportunity to resolve the President’s major challenge of the ‘incompetent image’. A People Power Party official, in a conversation with Dailyan on the 5th, stated that they view the reason for the defeat in the general elections, where they only won 6 seats in the capital region (Gyeonggi Province), was primarily due to the press conference held by the President right before the elections. They emphasized the need to proactively change the image of incompetence that was perceived by the public and political circles at that time.
Another political source mentioned that the keyword that is likely to emerge the most in the upcoming press conference on May 10, 2022, will be ‘integration and cooperation’, which was not present two years ago. They also indicated that there should be differences between the 2nd anniversary press conference and the messages given during the inauguration and 1st anniversary, emphasizing a shift away from ideological disputes and divisive politics towards messages that reflect changes over the past two years.