Liberal candidate Lee Jae-myung won South Korea’s snap presidential election on June 3 with a clear lead. With all of the ballots counted, Lee won almost 50 percent of the vote, ahead of his conservative rival Kim Moon-soo (41 percent). He now takes over a country that is deeply divided along gender lines.
Lee’s campaign effectively channeled voter anger. He focused on resetting South Korea’s politics after impeached former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was from the same party as Kim, unleashed chaos by declaring martial law in December 2024.
However, gender conflict has continued, subtly but powerfully, to shape voter behavior, campaign strategies, and the national debate about who is to blame for the lack of opportunities in South Korea for young men.
The election took place three years after Yoon pipped Lee to win the presidency by just a quarter of a million votes – the closest margin in the country’s history. Yoon’s victory was, as researcher Kyungja Jung noted, “the epitome of the utilization of gender wars.”
A key part of Yoon’s strategy was fostering a sense among young Korean men that it was now them, rather than women, who were the victims of discrimination. He secured 59 percent of the vote from men in their 20s and 53 percent from men in their 30s. Just 34 percent of women in their 20s supported him.
In the latest election, gender was everywhere and nowhere all at once. On the one hand, not a single candidate put forward a meaningful policy to address structural gender discrimination in the workplace, domestic violence or public sexual harassment.
None even mentioned the gaping absence of women candidates, despite thousands of mostly young women having filled the streets demanding democracy after Yoon’s martial law declaration. It was the first time in nearly 20 years that not a single woman stood among the contenders for the highest role in South Korea.
Lee, positioning himself as the consensus candidate, attempted to neutralize gender as a campaign issue. When reporters asked him whether he would announce any women-related pledges, he said: “Why do you keep dividing men and women? They are all Koreans.”
His remark may sound inclusive. But it signals a strategy to declare the gender issue off-limits for the sake of the greater good, thus sidestepping the specific inequalities that continue to divide the country. It’s a form of unity by erasure.
Lee Jun-seok of the right-wing New Reform Party, on the other hand, tried to resurrect the same playbook that delivered Yoon to power in 2022. He attempted to provoke, polarize, and win the loyalty of disaffected young men.
As Yoon had done three years ago, Lee Jun-seok called for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. And during a televised debate, he asked: “If someone says they want to stick chopsticks into women’s genitals, would that count as misogyny?” The question was a nod to a controversial online remark Lee Jae-myung’s son had made years earlier.
Lee Jun-seok’s comment drew widespread condemnation and, ultimately, he only scraped about 8.3 percent of the total vote. He won support from over 37 percent of men in their 20s, however, while 58 percent of women in the same age group backed Lee Jae-myung.
Gender is a highly political matter in South Korea whichever way you look at it. This gender divide is now one of the most consistent features of South Korean politics. Women are vocal and visible in public to safeguard not just their own rights, but also South Korea’s democracy.
Yet populist politicians have cultivated a perception among young men – squeezed by stagnant wages, fierce competition over jobs, and social expectations – that their diminishing opportunities are due to policies they see as favoring women.
This has resulted in many young South Korean men seeing feminism not as a movement for equality but as an obstacle to their own progress. In reality, their struggle has less to do with gender and more to do with structural inequalities in income and opportunity for all young Koreans.
As Kyungja Jung observed in a paper from 2024: “Misogyny becomes an outlet for their [South Korean men’s] frustration and masculinity crisis as they search for a scapegoat for their struggles in neoliberal society. They blame women rather than the neoliberal economy.”
Young people even from the best universities in South Korea feel they cannot compete in the job market no matter what they do. South Korea now has one of the highest rates of young people not in education, employment, or training among the OECD countries. This has given rise to the so-called “N-Po” generation, who feel so disadvantaged that they have given up on all future dreams of marriage, family, and a career.
South Korea isn’t alone in mobilizing backlash against feminism and gender equality. Around the globe, gender has become one of the major fault lines in politics. In the November 2024 U.S. election, Donald Trump led among young men by 14 points, while Kamala Harris had an 18-point edge with young women.
Meanwhile, self-described misogynist Andrew Tate continues to shape young male attitudes online. And in Italy, Giorgia Meloni rose to power on a far-right platform that, despite being a woman herself, reduces women to their roles as mothers and homemakers.
One model for change in South Korea could be to introduce quotas for women in politics to make their voices heard. Women only occupy around 20 percent of the 300 seats in South Korea’s National Assembly, trailing well behind the global (27.2 percent) and Asian (22.1 percent) averages. If women are not in politics making decisions about themselves, then their voices will not be heard beyond the streets.
Lee Jae-myung’s win has given South Korea a moment to breathe. But the fault lines remain. When an entire demographic, be it young men or women, feels systematically unheard or structurally discriminated against, opportunistic voices can move in to fill the void.
Gender is political. Ignoring it may be just as risky as confronting it head-on.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
