SEOUL-- The presidential office said Tuesday it hopes the ruling party is quickly normalized, shortly after the People Power Party (PPP) decided to convene a meeting to discuss switching to an emergency leadership system.

"The party is going through a complicated and difficult problem, and we just hope it will be stabilized soon," a presidential official said.

The PPP has been in turmoil since acting chairman Kweon Seong-dong inadvertently exposed text messages he exchanged with President Yoon Suk-yeol last week, in which Yoon was seen backbiting about suspended party chief Lee Jun-seok.

Party members raised questions about Kweon's leadership and urged him to take responsibility for the incident, which has accelerated drops in Yoon's approval rating to below 30 percent in some surveys, an unusually low rating for a president less than three months in office.

Meanwhile, the presidential office denied a media report that the presidential chief of staff, Kim Dae-ki, and some presidential secretaries offered to resign last week.

Earlier in the day, local magazine Sisa Journal reported that Kim and some secretaries had tendered their resignations but Yoon turned down their resignation offers.

The presidential office dismissed the report as "not true."

Source: Yonhap News Agency