The 2022 South Korean Presidential Election and the Gender Divide among the Youth

The 2022 South Korean presidential election was the country’s most closely contested election since a democratic direct electoral system was initiated in 1987, with less than a 1 percent difference separating the two major candidates among 34 million votes cast. Despite some parallels with and continuities from previous elections, the 2022 election saw new voting alignments emerge based on one topic: gender equality. In this essay, we explain how and why gender became such a prominent issue during the 2022 election campaign, and how this affected voting patterns, especially among male and female voters in their twenties and thirties. Specifically, we argue that gendered voter behaviour during the election arose from rising anti-feminist sentiments among young men, and that the two main presidential candidates politicized the issue to maximize support from this group. This in turn triggered the consolidation of a young female voting bloc. Using an original survey conducted in January 2022 with an approximate nationally representative sample of 1,017 respondents, we identify two possible causes of rising anti-feminist sentiments among young men: the belief that women receive preferential treatment in employment opportunities and mandatory military service for men. In addition, through an embedded survey experiment run before the election, we proposed that political candidates with pro-gender messages would be less likely to receive support from young men, while candidates with anti-gender messages would be likely to receive more support; these projections were confirmed by the actual voting breakdowns of the recent election. The results suggest that the new administration must handle gender issues with extreme care to ensure that divergent perceptions of the gender divide do not become further polarized over the next few years, since such a development could very well fuel democratic deconsolidation in South Korea.

视角

2022年韩国总统选举与青年中的性别对立

关键词：韩国政治, 性别, 反女权主义, 民意, 选举。

2022年的总统选举是韩国自1987年首次实行民主直选以来选情最为激烈的大选，两位主要候选人在3400万张选票中的得票仅仅相差不到百分之一。尽管与此前选举有诸多相似之处以及延续性，2022年大选见证了新的投票同盟围绕着性别平等这一主题而出现。我们在本论文中阐释了性别问题缘何以及怎样成为2022年竞选动员中如此突出的问题，以及它如何影响到选民–特别是二十和三十岁年龄段的男性和女性选民–的投票模式。具体而言，我们提出选举期间出现的性别化的投票行为源于青年男性中高涨的反女权主义情绪，而两位主要的总统候选人对此加以政治化以获取最大程度的选民支持。 相应地，一个青年女性投票联盟受到触发，以自身的巩固作为回应。本文通过2022年1月进行的一个原始调查，利用一个包括1017个调查对象的接近全国代表性的样本， 辨识出两个可能导致青年男性反女权主义情绪高涨的原因：认为女性在就业机会上受到特殊优待，以及男性强制兵役制。此外，通过选举前进行的一个内置的调查性实验，我们提出，表达支持性别平等观念的候选人比较不可能得到青年男性选票，而传达反对性别平等观点的候选人却有可能得到更多支持。这些预测在近期选举的实际投票统计中得到了印证。研究结果表明，新政府需要极度慎重对待性别问题，以确保未来数年中针对性别分野的分歧不至于进一步两极化，因为这种发展趋势很可能加剧韩国的民主解固。

Translated by Li Guo