‘Men don’t know why they became unhappy’: the toxic gender war dividing South Korea | Violence against women and girls

On a November night in 2023, within the South Korean metropolis of Jinju, a girl referred to as On Ji-goo was working the late shift at a comfort retailer when a younger man stormed in, aggressively knocking objects off the cabinets. When she requested him to watch out, he turned to her, saying, “I’m indignant to my bones proper now, so don’t contact me.”The state of affairs escalated. When On tried to name for assist, he seized her cellphone and threw it within the retailer’s microwave. She tried to cease him and he grabbed her by the collar and arms, dragging her a number of metres whereas slamming her into show cabinets. It was the beginning of a brutal assault. All through it, he repeatedly mentioned he “by no means hits girls” however feminists “should be crushed”.When an older male buyer tried to intervene, the attacker turned on him, too, demanding, “Why aren’t you supporting a fellow man?” When the police arrived, he introduced he was a part of a males’s rights group and referred to as for male officers to handcuff him. He later admitted he had singled out On due to her brief hair.“Earlier than this, I had solely essentially the most fundamental understanding of feminism – the sort any lady would possibly naturally have,” says On, an aspiring creator who makes use of a pen title.We meet on a sunny afternoon in a espresso store in Jinju, the place she nonetheless lives, simply blocks from the store. It’s a sleepy provincial metropolis of underneath 350,000 folks, 4 hours from Seoul by high-speed practice. On’s face is hidden behind a face masks, a beanie pulled low. Having endured insensitive questioning from native media within the aftermath of her assault, she takes some time to drop her guard. “I didn’t totally grasp the discrimination girls face, or somewhat I had accepted it as regular,” she says.The assault left her with everlasting listening to loss and extreme trauma. The perpetrator acquired a three-year jail sentence. In a landmark ruling, the appeals court docket recognised misogyny because the driving pressure behind the assault, the primary time a South Korean court docket had acknowledged such hatred as a legal motive.On’s story isn’t distinctive in a rustic the place systemic inequality and virulent on-line misogyny have pitched primarily gen Zs and millennials right into a bitter battle of the sexes. Whereas related fights over gender and feminism are taking part in out internationally, from the US to Europe, South Korea has turn out to be floor zero for gender wars, its extremely related, digitally literate inhabitants amplifying this pattern at a tempo not seen elsewhere.In male tradition, you’ll be able to’t communicate as much as these above you. So the place does that frustration get directed? Sideways, at womenOn the floor, South Korea seems a hypermodern society, outlined by its constructive contributions to international popular culture, cutting-edge know-how and smooth city landscapes. However beneath this veneer lies a widening gender divide that appears to belong to a different period. Amongst nations of the Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Growth, the nation ranks first for girls’s tertiary schooling attainment, but maintains the bloc’s largest gender pay hole. Ladies stay largely excluded from management roles, and South Korea persistently ranks final in measures of office gender equality. Whereas the nation leads the world in web connectivity and hi-tech innovation, these similar digital areas have turn out to be breeding grounds for a number of the most poisonous anti-feminist communities, turning digital hatred into real-world violence.Probably the most horrifying manifestation of this got here in 2016, when a 23-year-old lady was brutally murdered in a public toilet close to Seoul’s Gangnam station, within the coronary heart of the enterprise and leisure district. The killer, who waited hours for a random feminine sufferer, informed police he did it as a result of “girls have at all times ignored me”. The case grew to become a watershed second, sparking large protests, but the digital focusing on of girls continued. By 2018, it had turn out to be so normalised that it was routine to see indicators in public bathrooms confirming they’d been checked for hidden cameras, and 1000’s of girls protested over an epidemic of spy cameras and “revenge porn”. The disaster deepened in 2020 with the infamous “nth room” case of digital sexual slavery, through which customers of a community of Telegram chatrooms blackmailed girls and underage ladies into producing sexually express materials at residence. In 2024, a brand new risk emerged: deepfake pornography focusing on schoolgirls, with perpetrators, usually minors themselves, utilizing AI know-how to superimpose girls’s faces on to sexually express content material and distribute the pictures by means of Telegram channels, some with a whole lot of 1000’s of members.These digital crimes didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Within the darkest corners of South Korea’s web, younger males collect anonymously to share their rage. Whereas the west has 4chan and Reddit, South Korea has Ilbe – “every day greatest” – which at its peak within the mid-2010s ranked among the many high 10 most visited web sites within the nation. The discussion board’s affect reaches far past the digital realm. Its customers pioneered derogatory phrases akin to kimchi-nyeo (“kimchi woman”, usually translated as “kimchi bitch”) to mock girls as materialistic gold-diggers. These phrases quickly infiltrated mainstream discourse, with media shops adopting -nyeo suffixes in headlines to critique any lady behaving badly in public.As its affect grew, Ilbe started to radicalise, aligning itself with far-right politics and orchestrating provocative offline stunts. In 2014, an Ilbe consumer detonated a selfmade explosive at a progressive activist’s speak, claiming the speaker was pro-North Korea – a standard rightwing accusation in a rustic the place the left-right divide stays formed by chilly conflict divisions – whereas others taunted households of those that died in 2014’s Sewol ferry catastrophe by gorging on pizza in entrance of bereaved mother and father on starvation strike as a part of their demand for brand new laws following the tragedy.Whereas Ilbe’s reputation has waned, its legacy endures in on-line communities generally known as namcho, brief for namseong chogwa, which means “extra of males”. These manospheres have unfold throughout boards and messaging apps, permitting younger males to share grievances about feminism and what they see as reverse discrimination.‘Males don’t know why they obtained into this place’: Kim Min-sung, founding father of the Korean Recreation Client Society. {Photograph}: Jun Michael Park/The Guardian“In case you get entry to the open web earlier than you get formally educated, your worldview will likely be fucked,” says Kim Min-sung, talking at his workplace in Guri, a metropolis on Seoul’s japanese edge. The 22-year-old activist, as soon as an anti-feminist himself, speaks with an infectious vitality, punctuating severe factors with bursts of laughter.Like many Korean boys, Kim encountered these boards at a younger age. He remembers looking for harmless content material, akin to humorous movies, solely to be step by step uncovered to misogynistic materials. He admits he repeated anti-feminist rhetoric with out understanding it, just because it was what everybody round him did.Kim’s turnaround got here by way of an unlikely supply: fantasy role-playing video games. Right here, he discovered a neighborhood that was predominantly feminine and progressive. At first, he says, “I saved my mouth shut and simply performed Dungeons & Dragons. However listening to them, you simply naturally have informal conversations and also you realise the worldview you had from these on-line boards was simply exaggerations, caricatures and fantasy.”As we speak, Kim runs the Korean Recreation Client Society, preventing the identical on-line hatred he as soon as participated in. He now receives common demise threats he says he finds oddly validating. All the identical, “I’m simply battling signs. I don’t suppose what I’m doing is fixing the core of the issue. Males don’t know why they obtained into this place, they don’t know why they grew to become sad.”In accordance with professor Seungsook Moon, a sociologist and gender research skilled at Vassar Faculty within the US, the anger exploding on-line displays deeper societal shifts. She traces younger males’s discontent to South Korea’s embrace of neoliberalism. “Earlier than democratisation, when navy regimes dominated Korea, the federal government might create steady jobs,” she says. “As much as the late 80s, males with solely a school schooling might get jobs in good corporations. The financial system was increasing quickly.” However by the mid-90s these males have been being laid off and “when social hierarchy adjustments, teams used to extra highly effective or privileged positions will reply with intense emotional reactions to their lack of standing and respect”.This resentment is acute round navy service – a compulsory 18 months for able-bodied males that many view as an unfair burden in right now’s precarious financial system. It’s not a brand new grievance: in 1999 the constitutional court docket dominated towards the navy service bonus level system, which had granted veterans further factors in public sector job purposes. The court docket discovered it discriminated towards girls and other people with disabilities, intensifying many younger males’s sense that they have been shedding conventional privileges with out gaining new protections.The sense of male victimhood is widespread: a 2021 Hankook Analysis survey discovered that whereas solely 38% of males of their 20s believed girls face severe discrimination in society, 79% believed males do. Seventy per cent of males of their 30s noticed themselves as victims of gender discrimination.Demonstrators exterior Metropolis Corridor in Seoul name for the ousting of South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, December 2024. {Photograph}: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty ImagesInto this panorama of frustration have stepped new voices claiming to signify younger males’s pursuits. Amongst them is New Males’s Solidarity, whose affect grew to become clear when On’s attacker proudly declared his membership. The group and its chief, Bae In-gyu – South Korea’s reply to Andrew Tate – rack up thousands and thousands of views on YouTube with content material blaming feminism for younger males’s struggles. Bae claims it’s a “psychological sickness” and a “social evil”, and has sparked outrage by declaring the “nth room” victims have been “whores”.Bae’s rise displays the shift of Korea’s anti-feminist motion from on-line anonymity to real-world motion. Polished and theatrical, he presents himself in crisp fits, addressing crowds on protest levels or from atop autos, mixing his rhetoric with broader far-right Korean politics, fervently anti-China, anti-North Korea and anti-communist. Like his western counterparts, he positions feminists as an existential risk, “excessive misandrists” who “advocate for feminine supremacy” with “the particular function of inflicting gender battle”. Referring to himself as “hyung” (older brother), Bae cultivates an affectionate bond with disaffected younger males, rallying them to fund his activism with donations.This strategy has impressed a broader ecosystem of anti-feminist content material creators akin to “cyber wrecker” PPKKa, a masked YouTuber with greater than 1,000,000 subscribers who was suspended from getting cash on YouTube for mocking girls’s considerations about deepfake pornography. Collectively, these digital personalities have constructed on the legacy of earlier male rights activists akin to Sung Jae-gi of the Man of Korea group, whose suicide in 2013 – leaping from a bridge to boost the profile of his organisation – created a martyr determine for the motion Bae would later rebrand and radicalise.These anti-feminist voices have had a essential affect on the nation’s politics. On 27 Might this yr, 4 candidates vying to turn out to be South Korea’s subsequent president went face to face in a nationwide TV debate. Lee Jun-seok, a 40-year-old Harvard graduate and chief of the comparatively minor conservative Reform get together, posed a graphic query to a rival: “If somebody says they need to stick chopsticks into girls’s genitals or some place like that, is that misogyny?” Lee’s remark despatched shock waves throughout the nation. Social media exploded with outrage, college college students held press conferences demanding Lee withdraw from the race and ladies’s teams filed complaints with police.Lee Jun-seok, a presidential candidate whose misogynist feedback in a debate in Might despatched shock waves throughout the nation. {Photograph}: Ahn Younger-joon/APLee first gained prominence as a pundit, arguing that the youthful technology “had not skilled gender-based inequality” and that insurance policies akin to quotas for girls have been “anachronistic”. As with Jordan Peterson within the west, Lee’s elite credentials and articulate type gave mental legitimacy to views that had been confined to nameless namcho boards.His anti-feminist messaging was adopted by former president Yoon Suk Yeol, who noticed how successfully such rhetoric might mobilise younger male voters. When working for workplace in 2022, this ex-prosecutor with no prior political expertise claimed there was “no structural gender discrimination” in South Korea. In a transfer that foreshadowed the Trump administration’s assault on variety, fairness and inclusion programmes within the US, Yoon promised to abolish the nation’s gender equality ministry, arguing that it centered an excessive amount of on girls’s rights and was not needed. The technique proved decisive in one of many closest presidential races in South Korean historical past, with Yoon profitable by simply 0.73% – fewer than 250,000 votes. Exit polls revealed a dramatic gender divide amongst younger voters: almost 59% of males of their 20s supported Yoon, whereas 58% of girls the identical age backed his progressive opponent.skip previous publication promotionSign as much as Inside SaturdayThe solely strategy to get a glance behind the scenes of the Saturday journal. Signal as much as get the within story from our high writers in addition to all of the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox each weekend.Privateness Discover: Newsletters could include details about charities, on-line adverts, and content material funded by exterior events. In case you would not have an account, we’ll create a visitor account for you on theguardian.com to ship you this article. You’ll be able to full full registration at any time. For extra details about how we use your knowledge see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after publication promotionUnder Yoon’s presidency, budgets have been slashed for programmes stopping violence towards girls and the phrases “gender equality” have been faraway from authorities insurance policies and college curriculums. On the night time of three December 2024, Yoon made a surprising announcement: he was declaring martial regulation to fight “anti-state forces” and accused the opposition-controlled parliament of being a “den of criminals”. Inside hours, troops had surrounded the Nationwide Meeting and politicians have been seen leaping over gates and pushing previous troopers to convene an emergency vote. The decree was ended simply six hours after it started.This was adopted by months of mass protests demanding Yoon’s elimination, led overwhelmingly by younger girls. At Seoul’s historical Gyeongbokgung Palace, Jeong Yeong Eun of the Seoul Ladies’s Affiliation helped coordinate the “Yoon Suk Yeol out” feminist rallies, the place individuals took turns denouncing the administration’s assaults on girls’s rights. “When he declared martial regulation, it was a pure extension of how his administration had been undermining democracy and excluding girls’s voices,” she informed me on the time. These demonstrations continued by means of the bitter Seoul winter. “Individuals body it as if girls simply appeared for the primary time,” Jeong mentioned. “We have been at all times there in earlier protest actions. We’re decided to not let our contributions be erased and to make our voices heard.”‘We’re decided to make our voices heard’: Jeong Yeong Eun of the Seoul Ladies’s Affiliation. {Photograph}: Jun Michael Park/The GuardianIn April, South Korea’s constitutional court docket unanimously upheld Yoon’s impeachment, discovering his declaration of martial regulation a “grave betrayal of the belief of the folks”. The snap election that adopted in June 2025 would see Lee Jae Myung of the Democratic get together emerge victorious with 49.42% of the vote.Nevertheless it was Lee Jun-seok who would come to symbolise the depth of South Korea’s gender divide. His chopsticks remarks could have price him votes, however they solidified his enchantment amongst his core supporters. Whereas he obtained simply 8.34% of the vote nationally, the exit ballot breakdown revealed one more stark gender and age divide: almost one in 4 males of their 20s voted for him, together with 17.7% of males of their 30s. Dismissive of the mainstream candidates, they’d rallied behind a determine who embodied their resentments about feminism, navy service and what they noticed as reverse discrimination. Even new president Lee Jae Myung appeared to take up this trigger in July when he requested his cupboard to analysis “male discrimination” and develop countermeasures.This political divide alongside gender strains isn’t distinctive to the nation: it’s a part of a worldwide sample the place younger girls lean left whereas younger males drift proper. Nonetheless, nowhere is the “ideology hole” extra excessive than in South Korea, the place the depth of the divide stems from a collision between financial pressures and altering values, in accordance with political scientist Min Hee Go at Ewha Womans College in Seoul. “It’s about who will get extra of the pie, be it materials assets, job alternatives, even good companions,” she says. “It is extremely cut-throat, particularly in an setting the place younger folks must compete in an unprecedented means.”This yr’s election additionally issued a stark warning about the way forward for girls’s participation in South Korean politics. For the primary time in 18 years, not one of the six candidates for president was a girl.Because the gender conflict has intensified, even the anti-misogynists have generally adopted poisonous techniques. What started as “mirroring” – flipping misogynistic rhetoric to focus on males – has spiralled into more and more excessive types of resistance. When male boards mocked girls’s our bodies, the feminists of Megalia – a web based neighborhood that emerged in 2015 – ridiculed penis measurement. When girls have been referred to as “kimchi bitches”, Megalians coined phrases for males akin to hannam-chung (“Korean male bug”). Although Megalia has now closed, it has turn out to be a handy bogeyman for these in search of to delegitimise feminist activism.Prior to now yr, international consideration has turned to the perimeter “4B” motion, which advocates full withdrawal from a system it sees as irredeemably patriarchal. Its adherents reject courting, marriage, childbirth and any romantic relationships with males.Such radical responses have helped gasoline a broader backlash towards feminism. Even women and men who assist gender equality now usually distance themselves from the time period, which has turn out to be akin to a slur. As we speak, the mere accusation of getting feminist sympathies can set off public apologies from corporations.In 2023, a seemingly innocuous animation in a promo for the sport MapleStory sparked a firestorm. It confirmed a personality’s hand gesture transitioning from a fist to a coronary heart, however male players claimed one body resembled a feminist hand sign mocking small male genitalia. Inside hours, on-line boards had erupted. The studio issued an apology, and nameless customers combed by means of the social media accounts of feminine staff, looking for proof of feminist sympathies. Once they discovered a feminine artist who fitted their perceived enemy, they demanded her fast firing.The corporate, initially able to comply, modified course solely after intervention from the Korean Recreation Client Society, which satisfied administration to face agency towards the web mob. Mockingly, it was later revealed that the animation had been designed by a male artist in his 40s. Regardless of this, the feminine artist was doxed on-line and harassed with sexual insults.Some activists are working quietly to deal with the foundation causes of South Korea’s gender divide. In his cosy, cabin-like workplace close to Seoul’s Mangwon market, Lee Han is getting ready to journey throughout the nation, main classroom discussions about gender-based violence. It’s a fragile steadiness – colleges usually inform him to keep away from discussing something deemed controversial. However Lee and his group, Feminism With Him, insist dialogue is the one means ahead: “We have to communicate up and share what we’ve discovered.” What started in 2017 as a small ebook membership studying feminist texts quickly developed into one thing extra bold. Now, with eight lively members, they organise discussions, attend political rallies and work to create areas for trustworthy dialogue about gender.‘Who created this method? Males, not feminists’: Lee Han, an activist at Feminism with Him. {Photograph}: Jun Michael Park/The GuardianLee’s strategy is formed by his personal journey by means of navy service: “It was depressing. You’ll be able to’t even put your fingers in your pockets, can’t hearken to music, can’t simply drink or smoke. Having your freedoms taken away is traumatic and terrifying.” Now he additionally teaches gender equality to navy leaders and senior officers, arguing that males who channel their resentments at girls have picked the unsuitable goal. “Who created this method? Males, not feminists. Male politicians and the institution thought: males are sturdy, girls are weak, so don’t ship girls to the navy,” he says. Regardless of strain for reform, the defence ministry says it has no plans to introduce feminine conscription.Efforts to deal with these points face fierce resistance, notably from South Korea’s highly effective conservative Christian foyer, which has efficiently blocked anti-discrimination laws for nearly twenty years. “I’ve been prevented from talking at colleges as a result of they complained I used to be selling feminism,” Lee says. But he and his colleagues stay decided. Whereas their numbers are small, their work gives hope that dialogue is feasible. “Younger males can’t categorical their fears and anxieties,” Lee says. “In male tradition, particularly in Korea, the place hierarchy is so vital because of Confucian values, you’ll be able to’t communicate as much as these above you. So the place does that frustration go? It will get directed sideways, at girls, the simpler goal.” By creating secure areas for males to debate these points overtly, teams akin to his purpose to redirect that anger in the direction of constructive change.Again in Jinju, On continues to be recovering from the assault – she lately spent a month in hospital coping with trauma. After a yr dominated by court docket proceedings, she simply desires to get again to regular: “I need to discover work, deal with my household to meals and purchase toys for my cat.”She has been moved by what number of strangers have rallied to her trigger. When a petition calling for her attacker to be punished reached 50,000 signatures in lower than a month, she created a social media account to thank her well-wishers. Progressively she started posting detailed updates about her court docket proceedings, drawing so many supporters to the trial that some needed to stand. She continues to share information about related circumstances, which she sees as a small act of solidarity with different victims.“I wouldn’t have survived the yr with out the individuals who stood by me,” she says. For On, the answer isn’t about preventing over who suffers extra discrimination. “We have to concentrate on tips on how to resolve these conflicts and create a safer society for everybody,” she says.