Anti-feminist backlash in South Korea

Yoon Suk-yeol, a right wing former prosecutor, has won the South Korean presidential elections. The self-described anti-feminist promised to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family during his campaign, alleging that it was discriminatory to men and that women no longer experience sexism. He also stated that the penalty for falsely reporting sex crimes would be increased.

The election saw a high turnout, with roughly 77% of the eligible population voting. Sim Sang-jung, a women’s and labour activist and the only woman presidential candidate, commented: “Sexism clearly exists in South Korean society… Yoon’s stated objectives risk fanning dangerous misogynistic sentiment and will, ultimately, damage South Korean democracy. We already know the historical consequences of election campaign strategies that encourage hate”.

The People’s Power Party has made scrapping the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a core campaign pledge. The ministry provides family-based services, education, assistance to victims of gendered and sexual violence and social welfare for children and spends about 0.2 per cent of the country’s annual budget.

The anti-feminist movement in South Korea grew virtually simultaneously with the country’s #MeToo movement. This misogynist movement claimed South Korea was suffering from “reverse sexism” as a result of mandatory military duty for males. A suicide prevention portal dedicated to young women, whose suicide rates increased by more than 40 percent during the pandemic, was temporarily taken down due to hacking attacks accusing it of disregarding men’s lives.

South Korea’s Constitutional Court ordered the National Assembly to revise abortion regulations that are punitive and damaging to women and girls by the end of 2020, including decriminalisation. The South Korean government announced new draft laws on 7 October 2020, that would allow abortions up to 14 weeks and, in rare cases, up to 24 weeks, but would still make abortion illegal outside of these exceptions.

A recent study into attitudes on sexism showed 58.6% of Korean men in their 20s stated they strongly opposed feminism, with 25.9% rating their opposition as a 12 on a scale of 0 to 12. Women are now joining the workforce at higher rates (nearly 70% of Korean women between the ages of 25 and 34 work), but South Korea has the greatest gender pay gap of any OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nation with a pay disparity of 35%.

In March 2020, Korean authorities cracked down on a network of Telegram chat rooms where users were viewing, sharing, and trading non-consensual images of large numbers of women and girls, including images of acts of sexual violence, acquired through coercion and blackmail, and prosecuted multiple chat room operators. Within a month, 2.7 million individuals signed a petition demanding that the chat room owners’ and all members’ identities be made public.

The Korean labour movement has taken up sexism in recent industrial disputes. The Chanel Korea Workers Union, a member of UNI affiliate KFSU, announced on 21 December 2021 that they have successfully won wage increases and inked a new collective agreement with Chanel Korea management. The strike involved 390 union members out of 480 workers, and it saw 60 stores out of 85 Chanel-operated stores having to stop operations.

The union had previously struggled to negotiate over working conditions during the pandemic, unsatisfactory handling of serious allegations of sexual harassment cases in the workplace, and wages.