On Tuesday, June 3, South Koreans will be heading to the polls to elect a new president. For the women of the country however, the prospect of new leadership is not something they’re anticipating with much enthusiasm — all of the seven presidential candidates are men who have stayed clear of promoting gender equality policies.
Young women of South Korea are especially indignant, since they were largely responsible for toppling former-president Yoon Suk Yeol last December, after the right-wing leader declared martial law.
For weeks after his announcement, thousands of people attended protests — with women in their 20s the most highly represented group in the rallies, according to a study published by the East Asia Institute.
Another study conducted by BBC Korean confirmed that statistic — at one rally in December which was attended by 200,000, women in their 20s were the largest demographic, making up almost 18 per cent of those in attendance.
Research by local news outlet Chosun Daily found that roughly one in three protesters were in their 20s or 30s. By comparison, men of that age were largely “silent” and “cynical,” Hanna Kim, a political scientist at Chinju National University of Education found, with just over 3 per cent of men in their 20s at that rally.
Why did South Korean women protest?
In the midst of the freezing winter months last December, hundreds of thousands of women showed up to public protests week after week to rally against Yoon and demand he be impeached.
As a president who maintained South Korea was free of sexism – despite the entrenched gender discrimination and spate of gendered violence that prove otherwise, women were turning up to protests to show their anger and frustration at being treated like second class citizens.
They sang K-pop songs including Girls’ Generation’s ‘Into the World’, replacing the lyrics with chants including “Out, Out, Yoon Suk Yeol Out!”
In the country of over 51 million, women continue to struggle under the deeply patriarchal society. The nation has the widest pay gap among developed nations, with women being paid 31 percent less than men, on average.
Dating violence, femicide and digital sex crimes have increased in the last few years. According to the Korean National Police Agency, the number of dating violence crimes has been surging annually since 2023, with suspects in their 20s being the largest cohort of perpetrators.
Among the 29 top government positions, women hold just three, while in senior corporate management roles, they represent less than 15 per cent of leaders. The country was ranked 122nd worldwide by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in terms of women’s parliamentary representation.
In recent months, the government has implemented changes to its parental leave policies, in an effort to reverse the nation’s plummeting birth rates. In the largely conservative and traditional society, women are often pressured to marry, start a family, and step away from paid employment.
In 2022, just seven per cent of new fathers accessed some of their parental leave, compared to 70 per cent of new mothers. For these reasons, and many more, women have been galvanised to take to the streets and demand the removal of the former president.
The problem with Yoon Suk Yeol
In 2022, as the leader of the leader the right-wing People Power Party (PPP) — Yoon Suk Yeol promised to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, saying it focused too much on women’s rights.
This did not happen, but during his presidency, the ministry’s national gender equality index fell for the first time since its establishment in 2010.
During Yoon’s term, publicly-funded organisations and government departments with the word “women” in their title were dropped.
According to Go Min-hee, associate professor of political science at Ewha Women’s University, Yoon had the reputation of being “anti-feminist” and had “made it clear he was not going to support policies for young women”.
During his election campaign in 2022, he frequently appealed to the young male vote, denying there was structural discrimination against women in South Korea or that any forms of systemic gender inequality existed.
The BBC cited a survey by a local newspaper the year before he was elected which revealed that almost 80 per cent of young men in their 20s felt “seriously discriminated against” due of their gender.
On 14 December 2024, the National Assembly impeached him. In early April, the country’s Constitutional Court formally removed him from his role, clearing the way to elect a new leader.
Election day tomorrow
The country is heading to the polls tomorrow, but the two main candidates have been quiet about the polarising subject of gender equality.
The frontrunner is Lee Jae-myung from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP). The 61-year old has promised to introduce tougher punishments for social violence and improve protection measures for victims, and also vowed to strengthen the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. He also pledged to introduce a wage equality system, and new provisions to strengthen safety measures for women business owners.
But last month, when reporters asked him whether he would announce any specific women-related pledges, he responded, “Why do you keep dividing men and women? They are all Koreans.”
The Korea Women’s Political Network said in a statement: “His strategy is to ignore the gender equality agenda, because he sees it as a stumbling block against his election.”
Trailing Lee in the presidential race is PPP’s Kim Moon-soo, who served in Yoon’s cabinet as labour minister. The 73-year old conservative candidate has pledged he would raise birth rates by offering more financial support to parents, and said he would replace Ministry of Gender Equality and Family with a Ministry of Future Youth and Family.
Both candidates have been criticised for not directly addressing the demands made by women’s rights groups.
Kim Eun-joo, director of the Center for Korean Women and Politics, said the presidential candidates’ limited focus on gender equality and women’s issues, is a “gender elimination strategy” that “dilutes gender discrimination by framing it as a nonexistent problem within a universalist discourse.”
Image credit: Shutterstock
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