Why South Korean young men and women are more politically divided than ever

Seoul – It is a global change that has surprised political scientists and sociologists: the growing ideological fracture between young men and women.

In the recent American presidential election, President Trump won 56% of the votes among men aged 18 to 29, according to an analysis of TUFTS University Information and research center on civic learning and commitment.

In GermanyYoung men are twice as likely as young women to support the extreme right alternative for the German party or AFD, according to the Pew Research Center. Elections in the European Parliament last year showed a similar trend. According to the European Policy Center, In Portugal, Denmark and Croatia, more than four young men voted for far -right candidates for each young woman who did the same.

But few countries illustrate the trend more than South Korea, where a recent presidential election has shown how her young people have become polarized.

In South Korea, 74.1% of men in the twenty and 60.3% of men in their thirties voted for one of the two conservative candidates, against 35.6% and 40.5% of their female counterparts, respectively.

Experts say that the phenomenon said of 2030 men (men in the twenties and 30 years), who emerged alongside the integration of gender discourse in South Korea over the past decade, has challenged traditional left-right taxonomies.

The “men of 2030 are difficult to define in standard electoral theory executives,” said Kim Yeun-Soook, political scientist at the Korean Political Studies Institute of the National University of Seoul.

Having reached age in a world with radically different social contracts from those of their parents, the 2030 right -wing male voters are less likely to focus on North Korea – a decisive concern for older conservatives – than on feminism, which for them has become a dirty word that evokes “freeloading” women who try to take more than they are due.

Men took shade with visual symbols or hand gestures – like a pinched index And the thumb – which they support are anti -dog whistles used by feminists, in some cases who succeed in bringing companies to interrupt marketing campaigns featuring such incriminated content.

South Korean women supporting the #MeToo movement scene have a rally to mark the next international day of women in Seoul on March 4, 2018.

(Ahn Young-Joon / Associated Press)

During the 2022 presidential election, it was men in their twenties and the thirties who helped Yoon Suk Yeol – the conservative candidate who said that structural sexism no longer existed – Take a slim victory like his liberal opponent, Lee Jae-Myung, who was elected president in June.

This perception according to which men-and not women-are the real victims of gender discrimination in contemporary society is a decisive belief for many young South Korean men, explains Chun Gwan-Yul, data journalist and author of “20 years”, a book on the phenomenon that is based on large original surveys of young South Koreans.

Although the male backlash of contemporary feminism is the most visible aspect of the phenomenon, Kim Chang-Hwan, sociologist of the University of Kansas, says that its roots date back to socio-economic changes that started much earlier.

Among them was a series of government policies three decades earlier, which led to an increase in registrations for male and female colleges, which went from around 30% of the general population in 1990 to 75% in 2024.

“Young men today now have the impression of having to compete five times harder than the previous generation,” he said.

(Although gender inequality In the South Korea labor market, is among the worst economic cooperation and development organization, women on average around 65% of their male counterparts and much more likely to be employed in a precarious manner, these salary gaps tend to be less important for employees in their twenties.)

And although most research has shown that the negative effect of compulsory military service only male in South Korea – which lasts up to 21 months – on wages and employment is minimal, anxieties at the idea of ​​starting later than women in a hypercompatititive labor market have also contributed to young South Korean men feeling that they obtain a raw agreement.

Chun, the data journalist, stresses that the mass entry of women into higher education has also led to another tectonic change felt by the current harvest of young men: the rapid collapse of the traditional dynamics of marriage.

“Women have done the calculation and conclude more and more marriage is a net loss for them,” he said. “South Korea has transformed from a society where marriage was universal in a marriage, in an incredibly short time, in particular compared to many Western countries where these changes took place over 60 or 70 years.”

In 2000, only 19% of South Koreans aged 30 to 34 were not married, but today this number is 56%, according to government data. More than a third of women aged 25 to 49 now say that they never want to get marriedCompared to 13% of men, according to a government survey last year. One in 4 men will now remain single in his forties.

South Korean women participate in a rally to mark International Women’s Day in downtown Seoul on March 8, 2024.

(Jung Yeon-I / AFP / Getty Images)

Chun notes that the inadequacy in the landscape of marriage has raised in many misogynist resentment associated with incels, a term for men who identify as involuntarily single. A common refrain among young conservative men is the juron of South Korean women, who are often presented as “Kimchi women” – golden excavations that do not want to get their weight while demanding too many men.

“Do you need to go out with Korean women simply because you are Korean? No,” said Chul Gu, a popular online personality among young men in a recent flow. “There are Thai women, Russian women, women of all nationalities. There is no need to undergo the stress of going out with a Korean Kimchi woman.“”

The resentment towards South Korean women, known as Chun, is inseparable from the generational animus that feeds it.

“In the vision of the world of young South Korean men, they are not only fighting on women, they fight the older generation that is put on the side of these women,” he said. “It is essentially an anti-establishment philosophy.”

The “generation 586”, as they are commonly called, are the South Koreans in the fifties or sixties who reached age during the high and authoritarian period of the 1980s. Associated with pro-democracy movements of the time, generation 586 is one of the most liberal and pro-gender demographic data in South Korea-and of which Wealth thanks to cheap real estate, an avenue which is no longer available for the majority of young South Koreans accustomed to seeing housing prices in Seoul doubling in the most few years.

“Young South Koreans see these houses worth millions,” said Chun. “Meanwhile, the birth rate of South Korea decreases and life expectancy increases to 80 or 90, many young voters think:” We will have to be responsible for them for the next 40 to 50 years. “”

Among the candidates in the presidential election last month was Lee Jun-SeokA 40 -year -old conservative candidate, who has most aggressively targeted these tensions.

During his campaign, Lee promised to separate the national pension from South Korea by age, a decision which, according to him, relieved the South Koreans of the burden of subsidizing the retirement of the older generation.

Although it finished with only 8% of the total vote, it won the largest share – 37.2% – the 20 -year -old male vote and 25.8% of men in their thirties.

“South Korea is very locked up in a bipartite system where it is generally rare to see a third -party candidate make a big difference,” said Kim, the political scientist. “I think there is a lot of negative polarization at stake – an expression of defeatism or priority to the fact that the politicians of the status quo do not solve the problems of young men.”

The data show that disillusionment with democracy is also deep.

According to a recent survey of 1,514 South Koreans by the East Asia Institute, a reflection group based in Seoul, only 62.6% of South Korean men aged 18 to 29 believe that democracy is the best political system – the lowest percentage of all groups and gender – with almost a quarter of belief that a dictatorate can sometimes be more preferable.

According to Kim, the drift to the right of young South Korean men is a temporary deviation or a more serious forecast for the democracy of South Korea is still an open question, according to Kim.

“But it’s time to act,” she said. “It is absolutely necessary a political response to the frustrations of the young generations.”