Seo Cheon-seok is angry.
Angry about the traumatic breakup he had to endure when his girlfriend of five years cheated on him and left him for another man. Angry at having to waste “precious years” of his life in the army, training and fighting for a cause he doesn’t believe in. And angry that his “needs” as a South Korean man have not been met.
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“It pisses me off that women must be valued more than men for any country to be considered progressive,” the 32-year-old business manager told VICE World News.
A proud anti-feminist, Seo is part of a new and angry generation of young men in male-oriented South Korea fighting for what they see as “true gender equality.”
“Korean men have had to shoulder a lot of burden for generations,” Seo said. “We do military service while women are free to go on with their lives. Where’s the justice in that?”
He added: “It’s time we made our voices heard by voting in a leader who will listen to us, not overlook our sacrifices and contributions, and not pander to populist rhetoric.”
A fierce debate over feminism and gender is taking center stage in the lead-up to South Korea’s presidential election on March 9, where anti-feminist young men have emerged as a key voting bloc for populist candidates. Their resentment of feminism had already been simmering for years, ever since the arrival of the #MeToo movement in the country back in 2018. It was then that heightened awareness of digital sex crimes and cases of abuse and sexual violence made global headlines and prompted huge public outcries and mass protests by South Korean women.
Korean anti-feminists often note that men are put at a disadvantage because of mandatory military conscription and competitive job markets. They have also taken aim at the ruling government for promoting “feminist agendas.”
“Given the current state of Korean women’s human rights, it is obvious that the major subject of the presidential election should be feminism,” psychologist Han Ji-young told VICE World News. “But now, the presidential election is turning into a competition to determine who hates and discriminates against women the most.”
“[Yoon’s] pledge of abolishing the women ministry is what I have been waiting for. I think the ministry has done nothing and wasted our national budget.”
Dominating headlines and leading the popular vote is candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, who represents the conservative opposition, the People Power Party (PPP). His policies range from pledging to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, also known as the women’s ministry, to increasing penalties for people found to be falsely accusing others of sex crimes.
Yoon has been relentless in targeting young male voters, previously known to side with the liberal bloc, with anti-feminists gravitating towards the the 61-year-old.
One supporter, a 15-year-old middle school student named Kim Ha-jin, is one young mind that’s been drawn in by Yoon’s rhetoric. Kim isn’t even old enough to vote, but he’s left with little doubt about whom he’ll back when he’s able.
“If I were a voter, I would vote for Yoon,” he told VICE World News. “This is because his pledge of abolishing the women ministry is what I have been waiting for. I think the ministry has done nothing and wasted our national budget.”
The previous presidential election, held in 2017 following the impeachment and dismissal of embattled female leader Park Geun-hye over a massive corruption scandal, saw a turnout of more than 32 million people, accounting for 77% of those eligible to vote. But this year, turnout is predicted to be the highest ever, with more than 44 million registered voters.
At least some of that can be accounted for by the mobilization of angry young men.
“Yoon listens and speaks to us,” said a 28-year-old male voter named Im Je-in. “His campaign promises have been the loudest and the strongest so he has my vote.”
“Also, we had a female president [Park] in power for years, who turned out to be one of our worst leaders in history.”
New Man On Solidarity, one of South Korea’s most active anti-feminist groups, has thrown its support behind Yoon. The group’s official YouTube channel, which draws close to 500,000 subscribers, regularly features the populist.
“Korean feminists ridicule and degrade men and treat [us] like potential criminals,” Seong Bong-cheol, an ardent follower of the group on Instagram, told VICE World News.
“I would vote for Yoon. He was the only candidate who said he would abolish the women’s ministry and I got interested in him because of the pledge.”
VICE World News reached out to members and groups fronting the anti-feminist movement. A representative from New Man On Solidarity responded to initial messages, but stopped replying after emails confirmed that interview questions would revolve around the anti-feminist election.
“The 2022 presidential election is our most misogynistic in history.”
Women’s rights groups have decried Yoon’s candidacy, calling his promises “backward, offensive, and thoughtless.”
“The 2022 presidential election is our most misogynistic in history,” Haein Shim, spokeswoman of the Seoul-based feminist group Haeil, told VICE World News. “Candidates like Yoon are bringing anti-feminism to the forefront, even as backlash against our feminist movement intensified last year and sex crimes, harassment and attacks on women escalated.”
“In this environment, our votes are disregarded because our politicians do not consider us equal to men.”
On Wednesday evening, the four leading presidential candidates took to the stage in a live televised debate. Yoon, who some viewers noted was often seen reading his answers off scripts, was quizzed by his rivals Lee Jae-myung from the ruling Democratic Party and Sim Sang-jung from the progressive Justice Party.
“I cannot say [the structural gender discrimination] does not exist at all, but the thing is that it is not the right approach to collectively divide women and men and deal with it as a matter of gender equality,” Yoon said in response to questioning.
Last month, Yoon also said in an interview with a local newspaper Hankook Ilbo that [South Korea] “no longer had any structural discrimination,” and vowed stronger penalties for false sexual crime reports.
Though Asia’s fourth largest economy and the tenth largest in the world, South Korea has regularly ranked poorly in global polls in terms of gender equality. The World Economic Forum placed it 115th out of 149 countries due to its lack of equal opportunities for women. It also came in last in The Economist’s Glass Ceiling Index of female empowerment, with its gender pay gap being the largest in the world.
Like most other feminist groups in the country, Haeil takes issue with the People Power Party’s “constant demonization” of the women’s rights movement, and says that their policies echo the “reverse discrimination views” expressed by anti-feminists in the online male community.
But it’s Yoon’s campaign promise to abolish the women’s ministry—his core and most contentious pledge by far—that has caused the most anger. He said the body should be axed because it treats men like “potential criminals.”
Established in 2001, the ministry has undergone several changes to its name and is largely responsible for women’s and youth policies, providing support for needy families and victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence. One of its major feats was the abolition of the traditional Korean patriarchal family registration system in 2008, which required all family members to register under a male family head.
But the ministry, which has also been accused of political bias and underperformance, has been behind questionable and unpopular policies like a gaming curfew for minors—a law that has since been abolished.
By pledging to abolish the ministry, Yoon spoke to angry young men everywhere and received a significant boost in polling figures—jumping more than 6 percent to take the lead over his rival Lee. In light of this shift, Lee has also been seen as pandering to Korea’s growing anti-feminist sentiment, feebly pledging to remove the word “women” from the department’s official Korean name.
Gallup Korea polls released in February showed Yoon’s approval ratings being the highest among candidates at 41 percent, followed by his rival Lee with 34 percent—a sign that anti-feminist messages are resonating with angry young men across the country.
“Giving more importance to male voters during this election demonstrates the [already] vulnerable status of South Korean women and worsens the structural inequality between women and men,” said associate philosophy professor Yun Kim Ji-yeong from the Changwon National University.
“They are trashing the votes of women because misogyny is [widespread] in our deeply patriarchal society.”
Han, the psychologist, referred to local media reports about prominent leaders of anti-feminist groups allegedly engaging in back-handed deals with presidential candidates, including “manipulating comments on election-related articles” and bringing their members to election rallies in exchange for them pushing an anti-feminist agenda.
“They are placing enormous pressure on [certain] candidates to promote their intentions of eliminating women’s rights from campaign promises. Yoon is one who actively embraces these illogical requests,” Han said.
Feminist politician Kim Jin-ah of the Women’s Party decried that candidates in South Korea’s presidential election denied discrimination against women and claimed “structural prejudice” didn’t exist.
She said that she found herself the target of “witch hunts” when she ran for Seoul Mayor last April, adding that women had been “systematically marginalized in the election” and “pushed out of politics.”
“The truth is, candidates of the major parties do not represent young men. They are trashing the votes of women because misogyny is [widespread] in our deeply patriarchal society,” she said.
VICE World News reached out to the major political parties fielding candidates in the presidential election. Officials from the ruling Democratic Party and the opposition People Power Party did not respond to repeated emails for interview requests. A spokesperson from the Justice Party acting for Sim, from the progressive Justice Party, said that they were unable to comment due to her tight campaigning schedule.
The conservative camp received a boost this week as minor candidate Ahn Cheol-soo announced his official withdrawal from the race to support Yoon’s bid for the presidency.
Declaring his support for Yoon, Ahn addressed a last-minute press conference: “We are one team. I have no doubts at all that a complete shift in power would be realized through our announcement on a single candidate today.”
With Yoon confident of an impending election win and the polls backing him up, the question for women’s rights activists is now: What would a Yoon Suk-yeol victory mean for their movement?
“The anti-feminists would definitely welcome a Yoon victory… But even if he becomes president, it is by no means a defeat for feminism in South Korea,” spokeswoman Shim from the feminist group Haeil said.
“Gender equality and discrimination have risen to the forefront of public debate, demonstrating that feminism is still required for Korean society and also how much it is feared by male politicians in Korea.”
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