The Origin and Development of South Korean Young Men's Right-Wing Radicalization
2022; Georgetown University Press; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/gia.2022.0026
ISSN2471-8831
Autores Tópico(s)Asian Culture and Media Studies
ResumoThe Origin and Development of South Korean Young Men's Right-Wing Radicalization S. Nathan Park (bio) Although South Korea's young men began voting for conservative candidates in recent years, these young men did not necessarily do so out of a consistently held conservative philosophy. Rather, influenced by alternative-right websites that rose in the late 2000s, South Korea's young men became radicalized into politics of nihilism and misogyny. This article traces the origin and development of South Korean young men's radicalization by examining the online civil society which evolved into an offline political force, with assistance from South Korea's conservative governments along the way. Introduction: conservative turn, or radicalization? As recently as early 2021, South Korea's conservatives appeared to be on the ropes. The Democratic Party of Korea, which came to power after Park Geun-hye's impeachment, scored a crushing victory in the legislative elections of April 2020. But on March 9, 2022, conservative Yoon Suk-yeol was elected president, thanks in part to South Korean young men's conservative swing. In the 2017 presidential election following the impeachment, which featured five major candidates (three progressive and two conservative), 60.3 percent of the voters in their twenties voted for the two progressive candidates.1 However, in the 2022 presidential election, the progressive candidate Lee Jae-myung only won 47.8 percent of the votes, while 58.7 percent of the male voters in their twenties voted for the conservative Yoon.2 What accounts for South Korean young men's conservative turn? Although the electoral effect of their rightward move has become visible since the mayoral by-elections for Seoul and Busan in April 2021, in which male voters in their twenties overwhelmingly voted for conservative candidates, the rightward move of South Korea's young men began earlier.3 It is also not strictly correct to say that these young men's politics are "conservative." In their 2019 book Men in Their 20s, journalist Cheon Gwan-yul and data scientist Jeong Han-wool conducted an in-depth survey of men in their twenties to create a detailed picture of the young generation's political attitude.4 Cheon and Jeong found that their study did not show that the young men turned politically conservative, in a sense that they preferred the market economy, opposed the welfare system, or even opposed the impeachment of Park Geun-hye. A 2020 study by Choi Jong-suk of the Korea Democracy Foundation reached a similar conclusion: although the men in their twenties showed a small rightward movement in their attitude toward North Korea, they remained in favor of the traditionally progressive initiatives like welfare state and economic redistribution.5 Why did South Korea's young men begin voting conservative, then, when they did not adhere to a conservative political stance? Sociologist Kim Nae-hoon suggests an answer in his 2022 book, The Radical 20s: the young men did not turn conservative, but were radicalized.6 Based on his interviews of young men in their twenties, Kim found that South Korea's youth are "actively apathetic to politics," substituting a coherent political position with a generalized [End Page 153] distaste for politics altogether, resulting in a politics of nihilism that aims to punish and destroy the existing authority without a vision for what is to come. This article attempts to trace the origin and development of this brand of politics, with a focus on the rise of the right-wing online space in South Korea. Aided in part by the conservative administrations from 2008 to 2017, right-wing websites acted as the breeding ground for what became the prevalent political culture among South Korea's young men, characterized by nihilism and toxic misogyny. Temporarily defeated at the end of the Park administration, this political culture grew into a mainstream force as conservative politicians exploited it as a way to regain the ground they had lost. The rise of South Korea's rightwing online civil society The popular website "DC Inside" is critical in understanding the history of South Korea's online spaces. Established in 1999, it began as a message board to discuss the latest trends in digital cameras...
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