Misogynists in Korean Politics and Society Are Inciting Assaults on Women

"Male chauvinist" assaulted a female convenience store clerk in Jinju after being getting drunk on poisonous narratives.

South Korea is one of the countries with the worst records of gender equality amongst developed nations. The 31.2% wage gap between what female employees earn and that of males is the highest in the OECD, to cite just one example.

And the culture war regarding gender relations is getting worse. This happens in many countries and societies as a result of social development. In some ways, it is a reflection of the fact that the social condition of women is advancing: a large part of it is due to “blowback” caused by men’s resentment towards the advances of women.

When women have more social, economic, and political freedom, they have more choices, and they are not as reliant on men and hence not as subject to men’s control. The country as a whole benefits from having a greater level of freedom, economic dynamism, education, and creativity. But individual men with misogynistic views who view themselves as victims and blame women for their individual shortcomings and for the country’s social problems lash out.

Hence, what is happening in Korea (which is similar to what is happening in the U.S. and elsewhere). Politicians blame women for the fact that the birthrate is at an all-time low (a fact that is also true in most developed countries). When men have trouble finding a job, they blame competition from women. Sexually-frustrated and entitled “incels” blame women for their failure to find a girlfriend or wife.

A 2021 survey of 27 countries conducted by Ipsos found that South Korea was one of the most socially divided countries in the world, with 80% of respondents saying that there is a “great deal” or “fair amount” of tension between men and women.

Koreans also said that there was a lot of tension between people of different religions (No. 1-highest), the old and young (No. 1), supporters of different political parties (No. 1), people of different education levels (No. 1), liberals and conservatives (No. 1), social classes (No. 2), the rich and poor (No. 2), urban and rural people (No. 3-highest), and elites and ordinary folk (No. 3), but not between people of different ethnicities. There are a lot of issues causing social pressure broadly in Korean society, but the culture war over gender was also proven in the 2022 presidential election, in which the gender divide between young men and young women was its highest in years.

Candidate and now president Yoon Seok-youl stoked that misogynistic rage against women with his rhetoric and proposals, such as his promise to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality. He has blamed women for the low birth rate. He has denied that women face structural discrimination.

In South Korea, “feminism” has become a code word for talking about women and women’s rights. Misogynists have tried (with some success) to paint feminists as radical and anti-male. Then the word “feminist” is bandied about to attack any proposal for equal rights.

Yoon said this in 2021 in a meeting with his party’s supporters:

"Some say feminism is too politically exploited [to the point] it prevents healthy relationships between men and women," Yoon said. "From a social standpoint, the conditions are ill-suited for having and raising children. This is not a problem that can be solved by giving out government subsidies."

(And yet, Yoon’s administration is giving out government subsidies to try to up the birth rate.)

That kind of narrative, expressed in much coarser language, is expressed many times a day on alt-right forums like Ilbe. The anti-woman narrative has often crossed into mainstream discourse, such as when misogynists attacked a variety of media personalities and companies for using imagery of people holding things in their fingers. The “hand gesture” in question was supposedly an indication of a man’s, er, tool, being, let’s say, too small for the job. But in reality, advertisers were attacked simply for using images of people holding finger food in their fingers.

(And they say feminists are too sensitive about speech…)

The fact that the misogynists actually got companies to apologize and remove such imagery shows how much power the oppressed males still have over the economy and social politics.

In fact, misogynists will even attack women over the length of their hair. That happened in the 2021 Olympics, with verbal attacks against gold medal winning archery champ An San, and it happened in violent fashion at a convenience store in Jinju this week.

According to police reports and CCTV footage, a man in his 20s hit a clerk in her 20s and told police that he targeted her because of her short hair.

"Since you have short hair, you must be a feminist. I'm a male chauvinist, and I think feminists deserve to be assaulted," he told her, according to the police.

He may have been drunk. He may have been schizophrenic. But that doesn’t make his assault a complete anomaly. People who are unstable and out of control are only the most-likely to act physically on their violent impulses. Others might just act at the polling place, outsourcing the violence to the state (voting for the state to arrest women who have an abortion, for example).

If the same man came into the store drunk and mentally unstable but he did not hold the viewpoints that feminists and women with short hair were evil, he would not, in all likelihood, have attacked her.