Last week’s presidential election in South Korea featured two candidates who advanced radically different visions to the electorate.
Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea campaigned on a platform of progressive policies such as 30% gender quotas for females. “I think it’s very important to acknowledge the inequalities and issues of gender inequality that women suffer structurally in our society,” he emphasized.
Lee’s opponent was Yoon Suk-yeol of the conservative People Power Party. Yoon ran on an openly anti-feminist platform. He called for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality, and accused its officials of treating men like “potential sex criminals.” He promised to enhance punishments for false accusations of sexual violence. Yoon also charged that Marxist-inspired feminist ideology undermines healthy relationships between men and women.
Yoon’s charges were buoyed by a 2021 poll in which 84% of Korean men in their twenties, and 83% in their thirties, said they had experienced “serious gender-based discrimination.” And the anti-feminist group “New Men on Solidarity” reportedly has 15,000 Facebook followers.
Yoon’s improbable campaign was propelled by outrage over a feminist group named Megalia that promoted an image of a thumb and index finger held closely together, seemingly mocking the size of the male genitalia.
Last Wednesday, Yoon emerged the winner, carried largely by male voters who felt marginalized by the Democratic Party’s gender policies. An exit poll showed 59% of men in their 20s, and 53% of those in their 30s marked Yoon on their ballot paper.
Pundits from the mainstream media were aghast. The Washington Post ran an editorial bearing the alarmist title, “How South Korea’s ‘Anti-Feminist’ Election Fueled a Gender War.” Writer Haeryun Kang warned the election “signals a major threat to women’s rights over the next five years and could herald increasing governmental and social backlash against feminist movements.”
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It took a tiny Asian to have enough balls to call them out on the obvious!