Marry a No 2 man? In South Korea, women use presidential preferences to decide who to date
- Popular online posts claim Democratic Party supporters make good boyfriends and husbands, unlike men who favour the conservative People Power Party
- But some antifeminists have embraced the ‘No 2 men’ label – in an election that has been shaped by divisive gender politics
In presidential elections, Korean voters use a numbering system to indicate their candidate of choice. Candidate No 2 on ballot papers for Wednesday’s election is Yoon Suk-yeol of the main conservative opposition People Power Party. Lee Jae-myung, of the ruling Democratic Party, is Candidate No 1.
Which of these front runners gets a person’s vote could decide more than the country’s future, however, as Korean women have also been using voting preferences to assess potential mates.
Despite its economic and technological advances, South Korea remains socially traditional and patriarchal. It has the highest gender wage gap in the OECD club of developed economies and only 3.6 per cent of board members at the country’s conglomerates are women.
Yoon, a 61-year-old former prosecutor, has been accused by his critics of fanning misogynistic sentiments that have coloured the views of many young men in the world’s 10th largest economy, fuelled by soaring housing prices and a lack of jobs.
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But in an election campaign shaped by divisive gender politics, women are also making a stand. Online forums have been abuzz in recent days with women saying they would not marry a “No 2 man”, in reference to supporters of Yoon, even as those same supporters set up a website named “No. 2 man dotcom” to promote the conservative candidate and criticise his liberal rivals.
Women’s rights
Neither Lee nor Yoon have spoken in defence of women’s rights during their campaigns, despite women forming half of the South Korean electorate.
Yoon has gone further by promising to abolish the ministry of gender equality, claiming despite evidence to the contrary that women do not face systemic discrimination in South Korea. He is also on the record as suggesting that feminism is the reason for the country’s low birth rate.
In response, Korean women have taken to online message boards to widely share a flowchart showing the personality traits and characteristics supposedly exhibited by each of the front runner’s supporters. “No 1 men” make good boyfriends, husbands, cute nephews and praiseworthy grandsons, it says, while “No 2 men” are described as misogynistic “nobodies” or “losers” to be scorned by all.
The two kinds of voters were also unfavourably compared in a popular tweet that juxtaposes pictures of so-called No 1 men and No 2 men from television coverage of the elections: the unspoken implication being that the former are even ahead of their counterparts in terms of looks. It has been shared more than 15,000 times.
For their part, Yoon’s young male supporters have reacted by embracing the tag – sending photos of themselves with handwritten notes proudly declaring their status as a No 2 man to New Men’s Solidarity, an antifeminist organisation.
More fuel was added to the fire by comments Yoon made during last week’s final pre-election debate, in which he defined feminism as respecting women and affording them equal treatment. Lee, who had asked the question, criticised his conservative counterpart for not making any mention of discrimination or inequality in his answer.
Antifeminism
Before No 1 man and No 2 man, the term e-dae-nam (“men in their 20s”) was used to describe young Korean men who had expressed discontent with feminism and turned their backs on Moon’s ruling party.
The term has been sparingly used for a couple of years now, but it became widely used after last year’s Seoul mayoral by-election which saw men in their 20s overwhelmingly (72.5 per cent) vote for People Power Party candidate Oh Se-hoon.
Cho Jang-mi had been accused of being a feminist by male-dominated online communities, who bombarded her with malicious comments.
New Men’s Solidarity and other antifeminist organisations like it regularly hold protests in city squares across the country, while also disrupting the protests of feminist organisations – as happened in the city of Daejeon last summer. Many feminist protesters now cover their faces at rallies to prevent themselves from being identified and avoid online retaliation.
There is not much of a difference between a No. 1 man and a No. 2 man
Yi Sang-gu, chairman of the Welfare State Society think tank, believes the labels being applied to voters do not necessarily represent a deepening rift in society.
“There is not much of a difference between a No. 1 man and a No. 2 man,” he said. “They all suffer from the same underlying problems of unemployment, housing prices, marriage and other issues confronted by people in their 20s.”
“As these underlying issues have begun to surface and become more widely expressed by the youth, terms like e-dae-nam and No. 1 man, No. 2 man have merely attracted more national attention.”
Though Yoon has positioned himself as being passive on social welfare and hands-off when it comes to job creation, which according to Yi “may be a problem for the youth”, he said he did not “think either gender will benefit greatly from one candidate being elected over another”.
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“Even if Yoon is elected and gets rid of the gender equality ministry, the life of men will not get better and nor will the life of women get worse,” said Yi.
“The reason we are seeing these problems and tensions is because our country did not make policies or invest in the future of the youth.”
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
