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KIM WOO-SeoK, a 31-year-old chef in Seoul, grew up questioning the way society treats women. He felt sorry for his stay-at-home mother. He considered himself a feminist. But over the past few years, his opinions have shifted. When he came across women activists online, he was shocked to see some of them were making demeaning comments about men, including making fun of small penises. “I felt like my masculinity was under attack,” says Mr Kim. He believes that, since the 2010s, Korean society has become more discriminatory against men than women. Although he has a girlfriend, many of those who share his beliefs in the region do not.
In advanced countries the gap between the sexes has widened, with young men tending to be more conservative and young women tending to be more liberal. The trend is particularly striking in East Asia. Men are not adapting well to a society where women are better educated, compete with them for jobs and do not want to have babies with them. According to one survey in 2021, 79% of South Korean men in their 20s believe they are victims of “reverse discrimination”. In neighbouring Japan, a survey the same year found that 43% of men aged 18 to 30 “hate feminism”.
At first glance, this may not seem that unusual. Much of East Asia has tended to be rather patriarchal. Japan and South Korea are the worst performers in The Economist’s glass-ceiling index, a measure of how women-friendly the working environment is in 29 well-off countries. In the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, South Korea has the biggest gender pay gap. Women earn 31% less than men. In Japan that gap is 21%. In a survey in 2023 by IPSOS, a pollster, 72% of South Koreans agreed that “a man who stays home to look after his children is less of a man,” the highest...