As a Western male who speaks Korean, has lived in Korea, and is married to a Korean, I have puzzled over this topic at length and find your arguments quite persuasive--sometimes an outside perspective is useful!
I can also tell you that an obsession over penis size seems to be quite prevalent among Korean men: public bath houses / saunas (clean--no hanky-panky!) are common in Korea, and unlike in Scandinavia where no one gives a damn, some Korean men will visibly "check out" foreigners and even make comments about our genitalia (assuming we don't speak the language, natch). I've even been in conversations with groups of Korean men discussing black dudes' dicks. It's truly bizarre to me, and long pre-dates the finger-pinching movement--at least the 20 years that I've been in / around the country.
I have always thought that there is a glaring lack of traditional male role models; while Korean culture does have its share of masculine archetypes (warriors, generals, etc.), it venerates "scholars" (e.g., the yangban) to a much greater degree than even neighboring Asian countries.
And, while Korean pop culture certainly does have some traditional manly male stars, the vast majority are typified by the softbois / soybois of BTS, who look and present themselves as having taken a wrong turn on the way to a Harry Styles convention. Don't get me wrong, Bowie and Prince are awesome, and if eyeliner is your thing, you do you--but this archetype seems disproportionately represented in Korean pop culture. (And, to be clear, this pre-dates BTS, they've just turned it up to an 11.)
I will also say that violence against women short of murder remains quite prevalent in Korean culture, and is to an extent even normalized: Korean men "romantically" throwing women against walls or "passionately" hitting walls next to a woman is a recurring trope in Korean media.
Apart from that, domestic violence, revenge porn, spy cams, date rape, stalking, aggressive verbal assaults (not "you hurt my feelings" but screaming in women's faces to harass and intimidate), and violent threats are depressingly common--and while laws and enforcement have improved somewhat in recent years (which I think also contributes to some men's persecution complexes!), Korean police are generally apathetic about these things and make little effort to deter or punish them. Add to that fairly continuous, low-grade sexual harassment and stifling pressure to conform to a narrow feminine norm, and being a woman in Korea is often straight up no fun, yo.
Unfortunately, data on this type of lower grade violence is invariably hard to come by and low quality--but as the husband of an educated, professionally accomplished Korean woman, I can attest that it is very real, and one if not several orders of magnitude worse than what women in the U.S. or Western Europe (or even China or Japan) normally have to contend with.
Thank you for this comment. I wondered actually whether exposure to the West made them think about the penises of other races, creating an inferiority complex. I thought it seemed gratuitous to bring up, and maybe it didn't make sense because they would think about penises in relative terms comparing themselves to others in the country. But if they're running into foreign men in saunas and commenting on their junk, that is very noteworthy. Chinese and Japanese of course must also know something about relative penis sizes between races, and don't go crazy over it.
It's interesting, there is a sub-genre of Japanese porn (JAV) with black men and Japanese women, but as far as I can tell it's more closely related to tentacle porn (i.e., "monsters" / freaks of nature) than some of the "BBC" type porn you see in the U.S.
I'm not sure that's necessarily a positive comment on Japanese culture (and, to be clear, I think it's pretty niche!) but it's never led me to think that lots of Japanese men are obsessing over relative penis size.
Korea _is_ relatively more plugged in to the West than (traditionally famously insular) Japan and continent-sized China. And obviously much smaller than either as well. Maybe that has something to do with it?
And yes, male violence is _much_ more acceptable in S Korea than in Japan (a country that stifles everyone, so a country like Japan might actually have better gender relations because both sexes can see that everyone has to fit in to boxes regardless of sex). Continent-sized China has as many different norms about everything as Europe does.
You had me until the last part about Korean man being particularly violent towards their women. Your description sounds like copy-pasted feminist talking points, and I'm talking American feminists when they try to convince us that the least violent groups are actually the most violent.
"White male violence against women doesn't show up in crime statistics? You don't get it! It's in the culture! They made that movie where they threw a woman against the wall (even though they machine-gunned all the men in that same movie)." "Oh, they yell at the women!" "They're emotionally abusive." It's so bad! They're the worst.
You can actually feel the disgust when left-wing feminists talk smack of the safest men in society, like they're trying to berate a weakling for not actually putting them in their place, which is how Korean women seem to deal with their men.
I get what you're saying, and I don't think the argument you're making is wrong, but I want to pedantically make a small nitpick regarding the word "neuroticism" in the official context of psychological terminology.
In your original article on Asian breeding, you don't use the word neurotic, so I think the original article still stands. But you use it here, so I want to try to clarify and specify the use of these terms.
When you measure neuroticism at a national level, northwest European nations (France, Ireland, Britain) average a higher neuroticism score than Asian nations.
When you use the term "neurotic," I think what you actually mean is "highly agreeable and conscientious." In other words, someone who is a conformist.
Neuroticism is a bit different. Neuroticism is a heightened sense of negative affect, which is independent of the agreeableness and conscientiousness.
You can have someone who is disagreeable, lazy, criminal, and that person would be neurotic, but would definitely not fit the Asian stereotype you're describing.
The problem is that because of Jewish comedians like Woody Allen and Seinfeld, we've come to associate the term "neurotic" which someone who is studious, meek, a "beta male," which is not the actual definition. Violent criminals are often higher in neuroticism, while IQ is inversely correlated with neuroticism.
Links to data can be found here, if you find something contradicting this let me know:
I agree you're probably correct with regard to what Richard is saying--but, in my experience, beneath the surface level conformity, "a heightened sense of negative affect" pretty accurately describes a lot of Korean men...
I think you’ve correctly identified the main reason South Korea is different from China and Japan. Western influence, ie feminism in this case, is significant in South Korea, but much less in China and Japan.
Part of it is that they’re both bigger countries than South Korea. Part of it is that both China and Japan have a much deeper history and culture to draw from. But crucially I feel like Chinese and Japanese elites are just much more grounded in their civilizations and thus act as gatekeepers against foreign influence.
Because Korea is a small country and sandwiched between China and Japan, Korean elite have historically not had the privilege of being as parochial as the elites of China and Japan. In ancient times, Korean elites strove to pass China’s imperial exam and become Confucian scholars. When Japan occupied Korea, the Korean elite sent their sons to be educated in Japan. Since the end of WW2, the Korean elite send their children to the US and Britain in huge numbers, much more so than the elite families of China and Japan.
I think the problem is that there are two competing tensions in South Korea right now. South Korea has adopted much of the formal apparatus of the western world including that which has allowed feminism to take root, including gender equality laws, free speech of feminists, universal suffrage, etc. But social relations, governed by norms and not laws, remain Confucian.
Confucian ideology is your typical conservative ideology: respect your elders, children should obey their parents, wives should obey their husband, men are superior to women, etc. Of course, this runs against gender equality.
I think what’s happened in Korea is that these two competing ideologies of feminism and Confucianism have broken down by gender lines, predictably based on which ideology is more beneficial to their gender. Young Korean women lean into feminism. Young Korean men lean into Confucianism.
One of the admirable traits of Koreans is that they take everything to an extreme. Korean-Americans assimilate more than Chinese-Americans or Japanese-Americans. This is most striking when you look at military enlistment. Similarly, Koreans pride themselves on being even more Confucian than the Chinese.
So you’ve got rabid young Korean women feminists. And you’ve got rabid young Korean male Confucianists. It’s not surprising you’ve got extreme polarization.
Interestingly, you’d think feminism would be a bigger problem in China because female equality is ostensibly a core feature of communism. Or be a bigger problem in Japan because the de facto situation for women is worse in Japan than Korea. And both countries also have the same conservative/Confucian attitudes towards social relations which is in conflict with gender equality. But to circle back to an earlier point, it just feels like the Chinese and Japanese elites have not allowed feminism to gain much momentum. It really does seem to be a case of “patriots in control” lol (if you see it from that perspective).
Anyways, I think the phenomenon of South Korean men being whiny, is actually a result of South Korean elections being raucous and free affairs. Elections matter, as seen by the previous president who won with the help of the male incel vote. I think one of the unfortunate side effects of democracy is that it makes everyone a whiny activist. You see it in MAGA too these days. You don’t see this whining in China or Japan because both populations are politically apathetic. China for obvious reasons. Japan because it’s basically a one party state as well. Although the recent rise of the far right party has shaken things up a little.
"Young Korean women lean into feminism. Young Korean men lean into Confucianism."
Is Confucianism the right way to describe what these misogynists in Korea are leaning into? It seems inconsistent with the whining for *true* equality like women paying half the bills and how unfair it is that men have certain responsibilities. It seems like they took Western memes and ideas about equality and applied them in a very strange and autistic way out of a sense of personal frustration, which seems at most indirectly related to Confucianism.
I don’t think they’re sincere when they call for equality. I think they’re just using the words of feminists against them in selective circumstances. Most Korea men don’t really want Korean women in the military. But they use the fact that only Korean men are conscripted as a cudgel against feminists to justify why they should have the privileges they’ve traditionally had under a Confucian hierarchy.
It’s still a loser mentality. My life sucks, but at least I’m superior to women. But that’s not so different from many other bigoted impulses in other groups and countries.
I think what’s different in Korea vs China and Japan is that Korea is speed running the transition and conflict from a traditional society to a more modern, liberal, and feminist society. This is basically Korea’s Ordeal of Civility.
I don't think Korean men’s insecurity is entirely unfounded. Their concerns about penis size are a cover for deeper anxieties about their lack of social status. In South-Korea, it’s seen as less embarrassing to complain about having a small penis than to admit you’re not successful enough to date Korean women.
There's solid evidence that Korean women place greater importance on a man's status and education compared to women in the US and Europe. As Korean women have become more educated and successful, their dating standards have risen significantly, making marriage an increasingly unlikely prospect for many men. A study on this topic concludes: "These findings support the general relevance of marriage market mismatches in gender-inegalitarian societies and highlight the declining feasibility of marriage for low-educated men in such contexts."
Less-educated men in Korea feel that Korean women don’t want to date them—and they’re right. South Korea, at the local level, has subsidized single men to marry foreign women since the late 1990s/early 2000s, particularly in rural areas. Research has shown that this has lead to a noticeable increase in marriages in rural areas. Importantly, the policy did not result in a decline in marriages between Korean men and Korean women; rather, the overall marriage rate rose, allowing less-educated men who would otherwise be priced out of the dating market to find spouses:
Nonetheless, many single men in Korea still refuse to take advantage of these subsidies because they don't want to be seen as losers by society. Korea is a very ethnocentric country where there are strong cultural biases against marrying non-Koreans, negative stereotypes about foreign brides, and feminist concerns about sexual exploitation of foreign women.
"In South-Korea, it’s seen as less embarrassing to complain about having a small penis than to admit you’re not successful enough to date Korean women."
That is very weird from a Western perspective! It's much easier to admit you're bad with women here.
I live in a very Korean part of my city, one thing I will also note is the generational K rage among men and neuroticism around women is very common. K Rage is the common phenomenon of Korean men being stoic and stable up until they emotionally explode for seemingly no reason, and it is VERY common. The best I can tell, its linked to the masculine culture of korean society. For older Korean men, you should never show weakness or tenderness, only stoic determination. It leads to a lot of Outside the home calmness, and emotionally explosive fathers who take out anger on those at home. And I think a lot of young Korean men learn this way of dealing with negativity, that it comes out explosively on those close to you after building for a while.
Agreed, but will add that the "angry Asian[-American] man" trope is not unique to Korean culture--the original blog of that name was started by Chinese-Americans. As I recall, 15-20 years ago it was actually pretty damn angry... but I just checked in on it and I have no idea what's going--I guess they cashed in!
I agree, I have spent a fair amount of time in China, and i think Korea is just a more extreme version of China. A Chinese joke is basically that the Korean are the neighbor kid who studies harder than you, he studies Confucius more than you, he respects his father more than you, and he hates foreigners more than you
Something I've heard from my Chinese friends is that South Korea combines the worst parts of Chinese and American culture while North Korea combines the worst parts of Chinese and Soviet culture
Well, I'm not aware of China having a small penis movement (although the wumao + constant bellyaching about "the century of humiliation" is a masterclass in Little Dick Energy...).
I think you are right, But if i had to guess its due to the lack of democracy/ a free internet. In China, the only thing you are allowed to be organized about online is Pro government. They for sure dont like women or feminists, there was a huge rage about some Chinese girl having sex with a foreigner and the internet lost their shit. IMO they would have one if there was a place to freely express views.
My perspective is more straightforward than this one.
Picture being an actual misogynist. Not an America style 'misogynist' who wants gender norms to become more old school, or who wants it to be easier to date, but you actually don't like women. You would want women to serve in the military, because you feel no protectiveness to women. You would not make strong efforts to date women, because you do not like women. You would easily assume that women were privately demonizing and mocking you, because you privately demonize and mock women, because you don't like women.
The west operates on the assumption that all men share a certain affection towards women. Even the most craven 'misogynists' in America cultivate a private appreciation of feminine virtues. I do not think this is the case in East Asia.
Yeah, I think this is an underrated part of it. You can be sexist without being misogynistic. A lot of Korean antifeminists/young men seem to have genuine antipathy for women.
Re violence against women as a talking point in a specifically (South!) Korean context, any guesses at the effect size of differential cross-gender violence (M on F versus F on M) in S Korea versus other societies (I dunno, how about Taiwan for example)?
Given the whiny developing male culture you describe (sure does not fit *my* experience of S. Korean males, but the only ones I meet are sufficiently economic winners that they have cause to come to the USA for business), there might be less reporting bias than we might expect extrapolating from e.g. the American experience.
(little bias in murder reporting, I think, but the base rate is so low in S. Korea that the statistical strength is dubious).
Maybe it's because South Korea developed so rapidly from its agragrian state after the Korean war that they didn't have/take enough time to adapt vs. Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan.
Upon further reflection, I'm almost certain their insane growth (fastest development of any country ever by a long shot) was what led to this cultural lag, inequality and clashing.
Taiwan is 2nd to South Korea in Asian inequality and they're 2nd to South Korea in how quickly their economy grew (also pretty far ahead of the rest of the bunch).
Does conscription have a causal role here? Naively one would expect it to instil more masculine values in young men. Does it do the opposite? I note the Korean military unlike say the Israeli army which has universal conscription but gets in regular scuffles, doesnt actually do anything. Every so often the North does something provocative, the South, perhaps wisely, chooses not to escalate. What does 60 years of that do to military culture. An 18 month cosplay soldier camp, that uses its ample idle time to stew in its impotence might not be a great effect on impressionable young men.
On cultural role models, I remember seeing korea introduced as an option to the Civ franchise. Their special unit: a box to shoot arrows out of. I thought at the time, if thats the best the devs can come up with, they shouldnt have made the cut. Their current military culture also sits on top of a centuries long history of losing with no catharsis
In South Korea, the culture hasn’t really caught up to the economy. There’s all this deep misogynist Confucian hierarchy that young adults grew up with at home. And there are a lot of Americans, Canadians, and Brits in Korea, what with military bases and English teachers. And the women tend to prefer partnering up with these Western men because it’s more likely to be an equal marriage compared to what their parents had. So by and large young Korean men are jealous as shit of this. To the women, it’s not about dick size (for the most part), it’s about the fucking dishes.
That's definitely not true lol. It doesn't explain why misogynistic White Western Men are successful with Korean Eomen as well as other East Asian Women
It's not about Egalitarianism (no one actually finds Equality attractive), it's about the perceived greater Masculinity and status of White/European Men (and partly penis size).
Not necessarily equality, but certainly more equality than under strict Confucian sexual hierarchy. Western men get a woman who’s submissive and accommodating by Western standards and Korean women get a man who’s less demanding and more chill by Korean standards.
This nails it exactly. I live in Boston and it’s insane the amount of WMAF couples I see. I often wonder where the Asian men are? Are they just at home playing on the computer?
I wonder if you’re selling male-only conscription short here as a causal factor. Societies with compulsory service as a unifying male experience tend towards being more patriarchal- SK, Russia with conscription, US post WW2, Mormons before female missionaries were as big a deal. Israel is also a good comparison - it seems to be much more gender egalitarian.
I don’t think male conscription makes societies more or less patriarchal than societies with voluntary draft. UK had military draft only during world wars and is less patriarchal now than 200 years ago
To my experience I can say in European countries military conscription is more generational coded than gender coded. In several countries like Italy or France you often hear boomers saying, "Look all these young losers. We should bring back military conscription. It taught you discipline and respect."
Obviously this is the classic rhetoric boomers occasionally indulge to express superiority against young people. The truth is military service did not teach you many things beyond washing dishes and how to make your bed in the morning. Yes, you did also many “masculine” things like marching and learning how to shoot a gun, but that was only 40 percent of the job. Bullying by superiors was also quite frequent, pushing many into hostility not only toward the military, but the government as whole.
The only good thing was that once you finished your stint you could join directly the police and earn some money. It is no a case those politicians who cyclically propose to bring back the conscription emphasize how it opened up many “opportunities” especially for the poorests.
I would attribute the antifeminist movement to the overly competitive culture of South Korea and a broader breakdown of gender relations in East Asia. SK and its neighbors have cutthroat education systems where, if you fall behind, you are pretty much screwed for life. In the US, a person can typically choose to reinvent themselves, go back to school, and start a new career if they are truly dedicated to it. I think South Korea, Japan, China (and its diaspora countries) put institutional obstacles in place to prevent that. This creates a significant amount of negativity and resentment within society, which is channeled in various ways.
In terms of the sexes, schooling is strict and conformist, with a cliquish culture that discourages individuality and encourages in-group affiliations. A lower birth rate means children have fewer siblings, and combined with the schooling system and strict family structures, results in males and females having significantly less interaction while growing up compared to in the West. By the time you become a man, you probably have had very few female friends, and perhaps never had a girlfriend. I believe that is the crux of the issue, and it has very little to do with Western internet culture seeping into Korea.
Also, Hanania tried to focus on what distinguishes South Korea from the rest of East Asia, but maybe there's no need?
This particular conspiracy theory could essentially have arisen to random chance, and it might be that China and Japan have gender relations that are just as broken down.
I've lived in Korea and spent extensive time in Japan and China... while both countries have their own issues, the level of toxicity in Korea is next level / out of this world. Sure, /anything/ can happen /anywhere/ by random chance--monkeys with typewriters and all that. But, it happened in Korea and nowhere else, which makes it at least interesting to consider if there are Korea-specific explanations...
interesting piece for sure, I have two comments for sure
1 Korea is a pressure cooker social pressure and hierarchy, much much more so than the Chinese cultures (can't comment on Japan) and I think that seriously breeds neuroticism especially in social media age
2 although obviously the murder rate is minimal, you are seriously underestimating the effect of serious sexual harassment Korean women face on the regular. It's pretty crazy and far more than China or anything in the modern west. Like I've been in karaoke rooms where drunk korean guys are literally attacking their female coworkers. It's pretty crazy
Also, the westernized ones are a slice of the population maybe 6-8%
"Why is pinching seen as a way to mock men with small penises in the first place? Apparently this was the symbol of a feminist group called Megalia, which had this logo."
I think I saw the gesture used that way in 2012-2014, before Megalia existed. Probably in use long before that. Megalia must have gone with an existing symbol so it would be recognized.
I'm not sure this has any relevance at all, but I have a number of Asian-American male friends from college, and the Koreans are/were, to a man, the least neurotic and most Western of the different nationalities. From my understanding, Seoul is also extremely Western, at least compared to cities like Tokyo, Beijing, and other massive cities in East Asia.
Again, no idea what this means, but maybe Korea is in some kind of Western uncanny valley on this topic. It runs counter to what my intuitions would have said about the various East Asian cultures.
As a Western male who speaks Korean, has lived in Korea, and is married to a Korean, I have puzzled over this topic at length and find your arguments quite persuasive--sometimes an outside perspective is useful!
I can also tell you that an obsession over penis size seems to be quite prevalent among Korean men: public bath houses / saunas (clean--no hanky-panky!) are common in Korea, and unlike in Scandinavia where no one gives a damn, some Korean men will visibly "check out" foreigners and even make comments about our genitalia (assuming we don't speak the language, natch). I've even been in conversations with groups of Korean men discussing black dudes' dicks. It's truly bizarre to me, and long pre-dates the finger-pinching movement--at least the 20 years that I've been in / around the country.
I have always thought that there is a glaring lack of traditional male role models; while Korean culture does have its share of masculine archetypes (warriors, generals, etc.), it venerates "scholars" (e.g., the yangban) to a much greater degree than even neighboring Asian countries.
And, while Korean pop culture certainly does have some traditional manly male stars, the vast majority are typified by the softbois / soybois of BTS, who look and present themselves as having taken a wrong turn on the way to a Harry Styles convention. Don't get me wrong, Bowie and Prince are awesome, and if eyeliner is your thing, you do you--but this archetype seems disproportionately represented in Korean pop culture. (And, to be clear, this pre-dates BTS, they've just turned it up to an 11.)
I will also say that violence against women short of murder remains quite prevalent in Korean culture, and is to an extent even normalized: Korean men "romantically" throwing women against walls or "passionately" hitting walls next to a woman is a recurring trope in Korean media.
Apart from that, domestic violence, revenge porn, spy cams, date rape, stalking, aggressive verbal assaults (not "you hurt my feelings" but screaming in women's faces to harass and intimidate), and violent threats are depressingly common--and while laws and enforcement have improved somewhat in recent years (which I think also contributes to some men's persecution complexes!), Korean police are generally apathetic about these things and make little effort to deter or punish them. Add to that fairly continuous, low-grade sexual harassment and stifling pressure to conform to a narrow feminine norm, and being a woman in Korea is often straight up no fun, yo.
Unfortunately, data on this type of lower grade violence is invariably hard to come by and low quality--but as the husband of an educated, professionally accomplished Korean woman, I can attest that it is very real, and one if not several orders of magnitude worse than what women in the U.S. or Western Europe (or even China or Japan) normally have to contend with.
Thank you for this comment. I wondered actually whether exposure to the West made them think about the penises of other races, creating an inferiority complex. I thought it seemed gratuitous to bring up, and maybe it didn't make sense because they would think about penises in relative terms comparing themselves to others in the country. But if they're running into foreign men in saunas and commenting on their junk, that is very noteworthy. Chinese and Japanese of course must also know something about relative penis sizes between races, and don't go crazy over it.
It's interesting, there is a sub-genre of Japanese porn (JAV) with black men and Japanese women, but as far as I can tell it's more closely related to tentacle porn (i.e., "monsters" / freaks of nature) than some of the "BBC" type porn you see in the U.S.
I'm not sure that's necessarily a positive comment on Japanese culture (and, to be clear, I think it's pretty niche!) but it's never led me to think that lots of Japanese men are obsessing over relative penis size.
Korea _is_ relatively more plugged in to the West than (traditionally famously insular) Japan and continent-sized China. And obviously much smaller than either as well. Maybe that has something to do with it?
And yes, male violence is _much_ more acceptable in S Korea than in Japan (a country that stifles everyone, so a country like Japan might actually have better gender relations because both sexes can see that everyone has to fit in to boxes regardless of sex). Continent-sized China has as many different norms about everything as Europe does.
You had me until the last part about Korean man being particularly violent towards their women. Your description sounds like copy-pasted feminist talking points, and I'm talking American feminists when they try to convince us that the least violent groups are actually the most violent.
"White male violence against women doesn't show up in crime statistics? You don't get it! It's in the culture! They made that movie where they threw a woman against the wall (even though they machine-gunned all the men in that same movie)." "Oh, they yell at the women!" "They're emotionally abusive." It's so bad! They're the worst.
You can actually feel the disgust when left-wing feminists talk smack of the safest men in society, like they're trying to berate a weakling for not actually putting them in their place, which is how Korean women seem to deal with their men.
I get what you're saying, and I don't think the argument you're making is wrong, but I want to pedantically make a small nitpick regarding the word "neuroticism" in the official context of psychological terminology.
In your original article on Asian breeding, you don't use the word neurotic, so I think the original article still stands. But you use it here, so I want to try to clarify and specify the use of these terms.
When you measure neuroticism at a national level, northwest European nations (France, Ireland, Britain) average a higher neuroticism score than Asian nations.
When you use the term "neurotic," I think what you actually mean is "highly agreeable and conscientious." In other words, someone who is a conformist.
Neuroticism is a bit different. Neuroticism is a heightened sense of negative affect, which is independent of the agreeableness and conscientiousness.
You can have someone who is disagreeable, lazy, criminal, and that person would be neurotic, but would definitely not fit the Asian stereotype you're describing.
The problem is that because of Jewish comedians like Woody Allen and Seinfeld, we've come to associate the term "neurotic" which someone who is studious, meek, a "beta male," which is not the actual definition. Violent criminals are often higher in neuroticism, while IQ is inversely correlated with neuroticism.
Links to data can be found here, if you find something contradicting this let me know:
https://deepleft.substack.com/p/leftism-as-ethnic-neotony
I agree you're probably correct with regard to what Richard is saying--but, in my experience, beneath the surface level conformity, "a heightened sense of negative affect" pretty accurately describes a lot of Korean men...
It’s possible that Korean men are different from Chinese and Japanese men in this regard, I haven’t seen the data. #NotAllAsians
Men who are violent thugs and gang members have lower levels of neuroticism than the average population.
I think you’ve correctly identified the main reason South Korea is different from China and Japan. Western influence, ie feminism in this case, is significant in South Korea, but much less in China and Japan.
Part of it is that they’re both bigger countries than South Korea. Part of it is that both China and Japan have a much deeper history and culture to draw from. But crucially I feel like Chinese and Japanese elites are just much more grounded in their civilizations and thus act as gatekeepers against foreign influence.
Because Korea is a small country and sandwiched between China and Japan, Korean elite have historically not had the privilege of being as parochial as the elites of China and Japan. In ancient times, Korean elites strove to pass China’s imperial exam and become Confucian scholars. When Japan occupied Korea, the Korean elite sent their sons to be educated in Japan. Since the end of WW2, the Korean elite send their children to the US and Britain in huge numbers, much more so than the elite families of China and Japan.
I think the problem is that there are two competing tensions in South Korea right now. South Korea has adopted much of the formal apparatus of the western world including that which has allowed feminism to take root, including gender equality laws, free speech of feminists, universal suffrage, etc. But social relations, governed by norms and not laws, remain Confucian.
Confucian ideology is your typical conservative ideology: respect your elders, children should obey their parents, wives should obey their husband, men are superior to women, etc. Of course, this runs against gender equality.
I think what’s happened in Korea is that these two competing ideologies of feminism and Confucianism have broken down by gender lines, predictably based on which ideology is more beneficial to their gender. Young Korean women lean into feminism. Young Korean men lean into Confucianism.
One of the admirable traits of Koreans is that they take everything to an extreme. Korean-Americans assimilate more than Chinese-Americans or Japanese-Americans. This is most striking when you look at military enlistment. Similarly, Koreans pride themselves on being even more Confucian than the Chinese.
So you’ve got rabid young Korean women feminists. And you’ve got rabid young Korean male Confucianists. It’s not surprising you’ve got extreme polarization.
Interestingly, you’d think feminism would be a bigger problem in China because female equality is ostensibly a core feature of communism. Or be a bigger problem in Japan because the de facto situation for women is worse in Japan than Korea. And both countries also have the same conservative/Confucian attitudes towards social relations which is in conflict with gender equality. But to circle back to an earlier point, it just feels like the Chinese and Japanese elites have not allowed feminism to gain much momentum. It really does seem to be a case of “patriots in control” lol (if you see it from that perspective).
Anyways, I think the phenomenon of South Korean men being whiny, is actually a result of South Korean elections being raucous and free affairs. Elections matter, as seen by the previous president who won with the help of the male incel vote. I think one of the unfortunate side effects of democracy is that it makes everyone a whiny activist. You see it in MAGA too these days. You don’t see this whining in China or Japan because both populations are politically apathetic. China for obvious reasons. Japan because it’s basically a one party state as well. Although the recent rise of the far right party has shaken things up a little.
"Young Korean women lean into feminism. Young Korean men lean into Confucianism."
Is Confucianism the right way to describe what these misogynists in Korea are leaning into? It seems inconsistent with the whining for *true* equality like women paying half the bills and how unfair it is that men have certain responsibilities. It seems like they took Western memes and ideas about equality and applied them in a very strange and autistic way out of a sense of personal frustration, which seems at most indirectly related to Confucianism.
I don’t think they’re sincere when they call for equality. I think they’re just using the words of feminists against them in selective circumstances. Most Korea men don’t really want Korean women in the military. But they use the fact that only Korean men are conscripted as a cudgel against feminists to justify why they should have the privileges they’ve traditionally had under a Confucian hierarchy.
It’s still a loser mentality. My life sucks, but at least I’m superior to women. But that’s not so different from many other bigoted impulses in other groups and countries.
I think what’s different in Korea vs China and Japan is that Korea is speed running the transition and conflict from a traditional society to a more modern, liberal, and feminist society. This is basically Korea’s Ordeal of Civility.
I don't think Korean men’s insecurity is entirely unfounded. Their concerns about penis size are a cover for deeper anxieties about their lack of social status. In South-Korea, it’s seen as less embarrassing to complain about having a small penis than to admit you’re not successful enough to date Korean women.
There's solid evidence that Korean women place greater importance on a man's status and education compared to women in the US and Europe. As Korean women have become more educated and successful, their dating standards have risen significantly, making marriage an increasingly unlikely prospect for many men. A study on this topic concludes: "These findings support the general relevance of marriage market mismatches in gender-inegalitarian societies and highlight the declining feasibility of marriage for low-educated men in such contexts."
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7382948/
Less-educated men in Korea feel that Korean women don’t want to date them—and they’re right. South Korea, at the local level, has subsidized single men to marry foreign women since the late 1990s/early 2000s, particularly in rural areas. Research has shown that this has lead to a noticeable increase in marriages in rural areas. Importantly, the policy did not result in a decline in marriages between Korean men and Korean women; rather, the overall marriage rate rose, allowing less-educated men who would otherwise be priced out of the dating market to find spouses:
https://koreascience.kr/article/JAKO202026252144346.page
Nonetheless, many single men in Korea still refuse to take advantage of these subsidies because they don't want to be seen as losers by society. Korea is a very ethnocentric country where there are strong cultural biases against marrying non-Koreans, negative stereotypes about foreign brides, and feminist concerns about sexual exploitation of foreign women.
"In South-Korea, it’s seen as less embarrassing to complain about having a small penis than to admit you’re not successful enough to date Korean women."
That is very weird from a Western perspective! It's much easier to admit you're bad with women here.
I live in a very Korean part of my city, one thing I will also note is the generational K rage among men and neuroticism around women is very common. K Rage is the common phenomenon of Korean men being stoic and stable up until they emotionally explode for seemingly no reason, and it is VERY common. The best I can tell, its linked to the masculine culture of korean society. For older Korean men, you should never show weakness or tenderness, only stoic determination. It leads to a lot of Outside the home calmness, and emotionally explosive fathers who take out anger on those at home. And I think a lot of young Korean men learn this way of dealing with negativity, that it comes out explosively on those close to you after building for a while.
Agreed, but will add that the "angry Asian[-American] man" trope is not unique to Korean culture--the original blog of that name was started by Chinese-Americans. As I recall, 15-20 years ago it was actually pretty damn angry... but I just checked in on it and I have no idea what's going--I guess they cashed in!
I agree, I have spent a fair amount of time in China, and i think Korea is just a more extreme version of China. A Chinese joke is basically that the Korean are the neighbor kid who studies harder than you, he studies Confucius more than you, he respects his father more than you, and he hates foreigners more than you
Something I've heard from my Chinese friends is that South Korea combines the worst parts of Chinese and American culture while North Korea combines the worst parts of Chinese and Soviet culture
Chinese and Koreans are very similar -- similar genetics, and similar Confucian ideals.
Well, I'm not aware of China having a small penis movement (although the wumao + constant bellyaching about "the century of humiliation" is a masterclass in Little Dick Energy...).
I think you are right, But if i had to guess its due to the lack of democracy/ a free internet. In China, the only thing you are allowed to be organized about online is Pro government. They for sure dont like women or feminists, there was a huge rage about some Chinese girl having sex with a foreigner and the internet lost their shit. IMO they would have one if there was a place to freely express views.
Eh. Sure, in the sense that Brits and continental Europeans are very similar. China has as many regional variations as Europe does.
My perspective is more straightforward than this one.
Picture being an actual misogynist. Not an America style 'misogynist' who wants gender norms to become more old school, or who wants it to be easier to date, but you actually don't like women. You would want women to serve in the military, because you feel no protectiveness to women. You would not make strong efforts to date women, because you do not like women. You would easily assume that women were privately demonizing and mocking you, because you privately demonize and mock women, because you don't like women.
The west operates on the assumption that all men share a certain affection towards women. Even the most craven 'misogynists' in America cultivate a private appreciation of feminine virtues. I do not think this is the case in East Asia.
This is becoming much more common among the redpilled young guys, I think.
Yeah, I think this is an underrated part of it. You can be sexist without being misogynistic. A lot of Korean antifeminists/young men seem to have genuine antipathy for women.
That sounds like the entire Non-Western and Pre-Modern World to be honest
Re violence against women as a talking point in a specifically (South!) Korean context, any guesses at the effect size of differential cross-gender violence (M on F versus F on M) in S Korea versus other societies (I dunno, how about Taiwan for example)?
Given the whiny developing male culture you describe (sure does not fit *my* experience of S. Korean males, but the only ones I meet are sufficiently economic winners that they have cause to come to the USA for business), there might be less reporting bias than we might expect extrapolating from e.g. the American experience.
(little bias in murder reporting, I think, but the base rate is so low in S. Korea that the statistical strength is dubious).
Maybe it's because South Korea developed so rapidly from its agragrian state after the Korean war that they didn't have/take enough time to adapt vs. Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan.
Upon further reflection, I'm almost certain their insane growth (fastest development of any country ever by a long shot) was what led to this cultural lag, inequality and clashing.
Taiwan is 2nd to South Korea in Asian inequality and they're 2nd to South Korea in how quickly their economy grew (also pretty far ahead of the rest of the bunch).
Does conscription have a causal role here? Naively one would expect it to instil more masculine values in young men. Does it do the opposite? I note the Korean military unlike say the Israeli army which has universal conscription but gets in regular scuffles, doesnt actually do anything. Every so often the North does something provocative, the South, perhaps wisely, chooses not to escalate. What does 60 years of that do to military culture. An 18 month cosplay soldier camp, that uses its ample idle time to stew in its impotence might not be a great effect on impressionable young men.
On cultural role models, I remember seeing korea introduced as an option to the Civ franchise. Their special unit: a box to shoot arrows out of. I thought at the time, if thats the best the devs can come up with, they shouldnt have made the cut. Their current military culture also sits on top of a centuries long history of losing with no catharsis
In South Korea, the culture hasn’t really caught up to the economy. There’s all this deep misogynist Confucian hierarchy that young adults grew up with at home. And there are a lot of Americans, Canadians, and Brits in Korea, what with military bases and English teachers. And the women tend to prefer partnering up with these Western men because it’s more likely to be an equal marriage compared to what their parents had. So by and large young Korean men are jealous as shit of this. To the women, it’s not about dick size (for the most part), it’s about the fucking dishes.
That's definitely not true lol. It doesn't explain why misogynistic White Western Men are successful with Korean Eomen as well as other East Asian Women
It's not about Egalitarianism (no one actually finds Equality attractive), it's about the perceived greater Masculinity and status of White/European Men (and partly penis size).
Not necessarily equality, but certainly more equality than under strict Confucian sexual hierarchy. Western men get a woman who’s submissive and accommodating by Western standards and Korean women get a man who’s less demanding and more chill by Korean standards.
This nails it exactly. I live in Boston and it’s insane the amount of WMAF couples I see. I often wonder where the Asian men are? Are they just at home playing on the computer?
I wonder if you’re selling male-only conscription short here as a causal factor. Societies with compulsory service as a unifying male experience tend towards being more patriarchal- SK, Russia with conscription, US post WW2, Mormons before female missionaries were as big a deal. Israel is also a good comparison - it seems to be much more gender egalitarian.
I don’t think male conscription makes societies more or less patriarchal than societies with voluntary draft. UK had military draft only during world wars and is less patriarchal now than 200 years ago
Finland might be a good case study to compare to its Scandinavian neighbors.
That or even the rollback of conscription laws around the end of the Cold War.
To my experience I can say in European countries military conscription is more generational coded than gender coded. In several countries like Italy or France you often hear boomers saying, "Look all these young losers. We should bring back military conscription. It taught you discipline and respect."
Obviously this is the classic rhetoric boomers occasionally indulge to express superiority against young people. The truth is military service did not teach you many things beyond washing dishes and how to make your bed in the morning. Yes, you did also many “masculine” things like marching and learning how to shoot a gun, but that was only 40 percent of the job. Bullying by superiors was also quite frequent, pushing many into hostility not only toward the military, but the government as whole.
The only good thing was that once you finished your stint you could join directly the police and earn some money. It is no a case those politicians who cyclically propose to bring back the conscription emphasize how it opened up many “opportunities” especially for the poorests.
I would attribute the antifeminist movement to the overly competitive culture of South Korea and a broader breakdown of gender relations in East Asia. SK and its neighbors have cutthroat education systems where, if you fall behind, you are pretty much screwed for life. In the US, a person can typically choose to reinvent themselves, go back to school, and start a new career if they are truly dedicated to it. I think South Korea, Japan, China (and its diaspora countries) put institutional obstacles in place to prevent that. This creates a significant amount of negativity and resentment within society, which is channeled in various ways.
In terms of the sexes, schooling is strict and conformist, with a cliquish culture that discourages individuality and encourages in-group affiliations. A lower birth rate means children have fewer siblings, and combined with the schooling system and strict family structures, results in males and females having significantly less interaction while growing up compared to in the West. By the time you become a man, you probably have had very few female friends, and perhaps never had a girlfriend. I believe that is the crux of the issue, and it has very little to do with Western internet culture seeping into Korea.
Also, Hanania tried to focus on what distinguishes South Korea from the rest of East Asia, but maybe there's no need?
This particular conspiracy theory could essentially have arisen to random chance, and it might be that China and Japan have gender relations that are just as broken down.
I've lived in Korea and spent extensive time in Japan and China... while both countries have their own issues, the level of toxicity in Korea is next level / out of this world. Sure, /anything/ can happen /anywhere/ by random chance--monkeys with typewriters and all that. But, it happened in Korea and nowhere else, which makes it at least interesting to consider if there are Korea-specific explanations...
interesting piece for sure, I have two comments for sure
1 Korea is a pressure cooker social pressure and hierarchy, much much more so than the Chinese cultures (can't comment on Japan) and I think that seriously breeds neuroticism especially in social media age
2 although obviously the murder rate is minimal, you are seriously underestimating the effect of serious sexual harassment Korean women face on the regular. It's pretty crazy and far more than China or anything in the modern west. Like I've been in karaoke rooms where drunk korean guys are literally attacking their female coworkers. It's pretty crazy
Also, the westernized ones are a slice of the population maybe 6-8%
"Why is pinching seen as a way to mock men with small penises in the first place? Apparently this was the symbol of a feminist group called Megalia, which had this logo."
I think I saw the gesture used that way in 2012-2014, before Megalia existed. Probably in use long before that. Megalia must have gone with an existing symbol so it would be recognized.
I'm not sure this has any relevance at all, but I have a number of Asian-American male friends from college, and the Koreans are/were, to a man, the least neurotic and most Western of the different nationalities. From my understanding, Seoul is also extremely Western, at least compared to cities like Tokyo, Beijing, and other massive cities in East Asia.
Again, no idea what this means, but maybe Korea is in some kind of Western uncanny valley on this topic. It runs counter to what my intuitions would have said about the various East Asian cultures.
The Small Penis Movement? That sounds like a parody of MGTOW.