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

Seoul – A worldwide change that surprises political scientists and sociologists: the ideological division that grows between young men and women.
In the last US presidential elections, President Trump won 56% of the votes among men aged 18-29. TUFTS UNIVERSITY Information and Research Center for Civil Learning and Participation.
Inside GermanyAccording to the Pew Research Center, young men are twice as much as young women who will support the far -right alternative for the German party or AFD. Last year’s European Parliament elections showed a similar tendency. Accordingly European Policy Center, In Portugal, Denmark and Croatia, more than four young men voted for far -right candidates for every young woman who did the same.
However, a few countries tendency exemplifies more than South Korea, where a recent presidential elections show how the youth of the youth.
In South Korea, 74.1% of men in their 20s and 60.3% of men in their 30s, 35.6% of female colleagues and 40.5% voted for one of the two conservative candidates.
Experts, in the last decade, in South Korea in addition to the mainstream of gender equality discourse in the 2030 men (20s and 30s in their ages) phenomenon of traditional left-health challenge, he says.
“It is difficult to define 2030 under the frames of standard election theory, Kim said Kim Yeun-Sook, a political scientist at the Korean University Institute of Political Research at the Korean University of Seoul.
After aging in a world with radically different social contracts from his parents, 2030 male voters are less likely to focus on North Korea, which is a descriptive occupation for old conservatives, which makes them a dirty word that calls for “free loader” women who try to get more than they owe.
Men took Umbrage with visual symbols or hand movements – squeezed index finger And they claim to have an anti-male dog whistle used by thumb-feminists, and in some cases it manages to leave companies to quit marketing campaigns with such disturbing content.
South Korean women who support the #Metoo movement stage to celebrate the upcoming International Women’s Day in Seoul on March 4, 2018.
(Ahn Young-Joon / Associated Press)
In the 2022 Presidential Elections, they were the men who helped Yoon Suk Yeol in their 20s and 30s – Conservative Candidate He claimed that structural sexism no longer exists -Victory of the razor against his liberal rival Lee Jae-Myung, who was elected president in the June.
Chun Gwan-Yul, a data journalist and “20-person male” writer, calls the real victims of gender discrimination in contemporary society for young South Korean men.
Although the male reaction of contemporary feminism is the most visible aspect of the phenomenon, Kim Chang-Hwan, a sociologist of Kansas University, says that his roots have returned to socioeconomic changes that have previously started.
Among them, a series of government policies thirty years ago led to an increase in both male and female college records, which rose from approximately 30% of the general population in 1990 to 75% in 2024.
“Today’s young men now feel that they have to compete five times more than the previous generation,” he said.
(Despite the truth gender inequality It is among the worst of the Economic Cooperation and Development Organization in the labor market in South Korea, and women are more likely to be employed in a precarious manner of male colleagues, and such wage gaps tend to be less pronounced for gains in their 20s.)
And most studies have shown that South Korea’s negative impact on men’s mandatory military service only for 21 months and employment, but contributed to the feeling that the worries of making an early start from the hyper-computer market than women in the hyper-computer market contributed to the felt.
Data journalist Chun says that the mass entrance of women into higher education leads to another tectonic change felt by the crop of existing young men: the rapid collapse of traditional marriage dynamics.
“Women do mathematics and conclude that more and more marriage is a clear loss for them,” he said. “South Korea turned from a society where marriage is universal, especially in a short period of time in a short period of time compared to many Western countries where these changes played for more than 60 or 70 years.”
In 2000, only 19% of the South Koreans between the ages of 30 and 34 were not married, but according to government data, this number is 56%. marriedAccording to a government survey last year, compared with 13% of men. One of 4 men will remain unmarried in his 40s.

South Korean women are at a rally to mark the International Women’s Day in Seoul City Center on March 8, 2024.
(Jung Yeon-Je/ AFP/ Getty Images)
Chun says that the incompatibility in the marriage landscape is an involuntary female enemy’s anger, which is a term for men who describe it as a Celibate involuntarily. A widespread avoidance among young conservative men is the blasphemy of South Korean women, who are usually thrown as “Kimchi Women”-Gold scrapers who do not want to suffer when they demand too many men.
“Korean women are only Korean? No, no,” said Chul Gu, a popular online personality, popularly popular among young men. “There are Thai women, Russian women, women from all nations. No need to be exposed to stress with a Korean Kimchi woman.“
Chun says that the anger of South Korean women is inseparable from the generation animus that feeds it.
“In the worldview of young South Korean men, they do not fight only women, they are fighting older generations dealing with these women,” he said. “This is actually an anti -organization morality.”
“586 generations”, as they are widely called, are South Koreans in their ages of 50 or 60s, aging in the agenda of the 1980s during the authoritarian period. The 586 generations, which are associated with pro -democracy movements of the time, are one of the most liberal and pro -gender equality demographies in South Korea, and a street that does not be used to seeing most of their reserves through cheap real estate and is no longer used to seeing housing prices in Seoul.
“Young South Koreans see that these houses are worth millions of value, Chun said Chun said. “In the meantime, South Korea’s birth rate decreases and life expectancy rises to 80 or 90, so many young voters, ‘We must be responsible for them for the next 40 to 50 years.’ ‘He thinks.
Among the candidates in last month’s presidential elections Lee Jun-SeokA 40 -year -old third -party conservative candidate aims at targeting these tensions in the most aggressive way.
During his campaign, Lee promised to separate South Korea’s rapidly depleted national pension by age, a move he said, the young South Koreans would save the retirement of the old generation from the burden of subsidizing.
Although only 8% of the total vote finished, 25.8% of men in 37.2% and 30s won the biggest share of the male vote for 20 people.
Political scientist Kim, “South Korea, a third -party candidate has made a lot of difference in a two -party system was locked in a rare system,” he said. “I think there is a lot of negative polarization in the game – the expression of defeat or deprived of the rights of status quo politicians in the fact that young men do not address the problems of young men.”
Data show that democracy and disappointment work in depth.
According to a recent study of 1,514 South Koreli by the East Asian Institute, only 62.6% of South Korean men between the ages of 18 and 29, who are a Seoul-based thinking tank believes that democracy is the best political system-the lowest age and the lowest dictatorship in the gender group can sometimes be preferred.
According to Kim, it is still a clear question whether the drifting of young South Korean men to the right is a temporary deviation or a more serious estimation for South Korean democracy.
“But it’s time to take action now,” he said. “Young generations must have a political response to the frustrations of the frustrations.”