There is a coup underway in South Korea and we don’t know at this writing if it’s going to succeed or not. The right wing would-be dictator President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and the parliament immediately convened and countermanded it which means it cannot hold under the law. The military and police are on the scene and nobody knows what will come next.
After the election here I was thinking about misogyny (I wonder why) and how it affects politics and today I was reminded of this. It’s a story in the BBC from a couple of years ago about the South Korean elections:
His fingers relentlessly tap the keyboard as he replies to dozens of their messages at his desk in the centre of a busy campaign office for one of South Korea’s main presidential candidates, Yoon Suk-yeol.
“Nearly 90% of men in their twenties are anti-feminist or do not support feminism,” he tells me.
South Korea has one of the worst women’s rights records in the developed world. And yet it is disgruntled young men who have been the focus of this country’s presidential election.
Many do not see feminism as a fight for equality. Instead they resent it and view it as a form of reverse discrimination, a movement to take away their jobs and their opportunities.
It is a disparaging development for the tens of thousands of young women who took to the streets of Seoul in 2018 to shout “Me Too” after several high profile criminal cases involving sexual harassment and spy camera crimes known as “molka”.
But now that cry is being drowned out by men shouting “Me First”.
The country’s gender politics is a minefield the country’s next leader will have to navigate – if they can first win the battle to get into office.
Conservative candidate Mr Yoon and his liberal rival Lee Jae-myung are neck and neck in a contest to become the next leader of Asia’s fourth largest economy.
Voters’ top concerns are skyrocketing house prices, stagnant economic growth, and stubborn youth unemployment.
Neither have any experience as legislators in the National Assembly which is a first in South Korea’s democratic history.
And neither appear to have a strong female voting base. Both parties have been accused of misogyny.
Mr Lee’s ruling Democratic Party has seen a number of high-profile sexual harassment scandals, with the mayor of Busan sent to prison for sexual assault.
Mr Yoon, of the People’s Power Party, has made abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a central pledge of his campaign.
The ministry largely provides family-based services, education, and social welfare for children and spends around 0.2% of the nation’s annual budget – less than 3% of which goes towards the promotion of equality for women. But Yoon knows this move will be popular among a key demographic – young men.
A survey last year by a local newspaper found that 79% of young men in South Korea feel “seriously discriminated against” because of their gender.
As I walk with Min-young to a cafe to meet some of these young men, he tells me that “feminism has been going in the wrong direction”.
He says many men he’s spoken to feel “let down”, adding that he believes it is “necessary to pacify, to convince and to appease them first”.
These men claim that they are not trying to drown out the voices of women, but simply to amplify the voices of young men.
Sound familiar?
Authoritarianism is many things but patriarchy is at the heart of it. It’s the oldest organizing principle in human history and it isn’t going quietly.