Public Approval
In the nation’s governors and mayors performance evaluation conducted by “Realmeter”, the most powerful poll taker in Korea, in Dec. 2015, North Gyeongsang Province Governor Kim Kwan-yong ranked first with a 69 percent positive approval rating.
Kim had ranked top for four straight months from Sept. last year, and he won first place 13 times out of 17 in total since the poll started from Sept. 2014. Kim’s field-centered communication, integrative leadership and daring breakthrough power led to high approval ratings. In particular, North Gyeongsang Province secured 12 trillion won (US$9.9 billion) of national expenditures, the largest figure this year. Although the government had been gradually reducing social overhead capital (SOC) budgets and there was a fierce debate among politicians, he acquired 6.78 trillion won (US$5.59 billion) of SOC budgets.
With Kim recently attracting national projects related to the expansion of new growth engines, his approval ratings also increased. The projects, which passed the government’s preliminary feasibility survey, include “North Gyeongsang Province Model of Smart Grid Expansion Project”, “National Safety Robot Project”, “Wearable Smart Device Material Industry”, and “National Vaccine Industry Cluster.”
His movement seeking to create jobs from the end of last year also seemed to be affected his approval ratings. He established a “youth employment” department for the first time in the nation and has helped younger people start their own businesses and work overseas. Moreover, he is making effort to raise the employment rate of the youth living in regions at public institutions to 30 percent. In addition, he has invited regional executives of conglomerates, including POSCO and Samsung, to the official residence of the mayor from the beginning of the year and has been asking to expand the employment rate of younger people living in regions.