Why has the support for South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in collapsed among young men?

In a country undergoing a polarising and sometimes vitriolic debate about gender, taking sides only leads to an electoral bludgeoning

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South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Photo: EPA

Published: 9:02am, 18 Jan 2019Updated: 10:16am, 18 Jan 2019

Like many of his peers, 21-year-old Do Sang-won had high hopes for Moon Jae-in when he voted for him for president.

After his predecessor Park Geun-hye was toppled in an extraordinary corruption scandal involving a confidante linked to a shamanistic cult, Moon seemed to embody a fairer and more just South Korea.

But since the election Do’s expectations have soured, and he is far from alone. Although Moon won the youth vote in May 2017, young South Korean men are now abandoning the president in droves and are less satisfied with his performance than any other demographic.

In a survey carried out by South Korean polling firm Realmeter last month, just 29.4 per cent of men in their 20s said they approved of Moon, compared to 64.5 per cent of women in the same age bracket – an even sharper divide than the much-discussed gender split among Democratic and Republican voters in the United States, where 23 percentage points separates male and female voters.

US congresswomen of the Democratic Party pose for a picture. Photo: AFP

Moon’s plummeting approval rating among younger men, which stood at 87 per cent soon after the election according to research company Gallup Korea, has been linked to a lacklustre jobs market, slowing economy, and his support for feminism in a country that is undergoing a polarising and sometimes vitriolic debate about gender.

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