Anti-Feminist backlash. Gender and generational conflict in South Korea

Scholarship on Korean elections and voting behavior has emphasised the shift from traditional cleavages such as ideology and region to newer ones, including generation, class, and gender.

One of the most common keywords used during South Korea’s 2022 presidential election was Idaenam (male in twenties), hinting at the social group more likely to prove determinant to the outcome. More broadly, the stark conflict among the youth in their 20s and 30s along gender lines has now become among the most discussed topics in Korean media and politics. While the significance of the phenomenon has surely grown of late, evidence points to the steady presence of a generational cleavage among Koreans’ voting behaviour over the last couple of decades, with older voters in their 60s above more likely to vote for the conservative, and voters in their 40-50s more inclined to support the progressive parties. As such, while the issue is not novel in Korean society and politics, it has certainly taken on a new magnitude and new features in the country.

The article combines quantitative methodology to analyse voting behaviour with qualitative methods such as digital ethnography looking at online community discussions as well as publicly-available digital sources.

The paper embeds the Korean case study in broader scholarly debates on feminism, political cleavages, and digital populism. Next, it moves to provide an overview of the gender and generational conflicts in Korea. The central part of the paper focuses on the two specific case studies: the 2022 elections and the rise and impact of the #MeToo movement.

The paper advances a two-fold argument. First, it argues that while the public discourse focuses on gender and generational conflicts and later translates into electoral behaviours, what is really not discussed – let alone addressed in government or parliament - is the structural discrimination of marginal, marginalised and minority groups, which in this case include young, female and elderly member of the citizenry and society. Second, it highlights the intersectional nature of the gender and generational inequalities in Korean society and discusses how they play out in politics, especially during elections.

About the speaker

Dr Youngmi Kim is Head of Korean Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she also serves as the Director of the Scottish Centre for Korean Studies.

Her current publications include:

• Kim, Y. 2024. Inequality, polarization, social and economic crisis, now and then, European Journal of Korean Studies, 23 (1): 147-160 
• Kim, Y 2024 영국의 한국학 연구동향 (Korean studies research dynamics and perspectives in the UK) 저서-  글로벌 한국학의현황과 발전방향, 서울: 북코리아, p. 233-262
• Kim, Y. 2022 The 2022 Election in South Korea: The Politics of Resentment and Revenge Confirms Older Trends and Cleavages and Reveals New Ones.” Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs 8(1): 14-22
• Kim, Y. 2021 Mirroring misogyny in Hell Joseon: Megalia, Womad, and Korea's Feminism in the Age of Digital Populism. European Journal of Korean Studies, 20(2): 101-133.

Registration

This event is free, open to the public and held in person only. If you would like to attend, please register using the link above.

• Organiser: SOAS Centre of Korean Studies
• Contact: centres@soas.ac.uk

Image credit: Markus Winkler via Unsplash.