South Korea’s coterie of extremely online incels, men’s rights activists and anti-feminist influencers are cheering after their biggest win in years. 

On Wednesday, March 9th, conservative politician Yoon Suk-yeol won the South Korean presidential race, notching a paper-thin win by 0.73 percentage points — a difference of just under 250,000 votes in a nation of some 44 million registered voters. It came after months of campaigning that fixated on the Culture War® between young men and women, with Yoon swinging for the fences with rhetoric that reframed men as victims of progressive thought and painted Korea’s feminist movement as profoundly flawed. 

Yoon, 61, has claimed that “structural discrimination based on gender” simply doesn’t exist in South Korea, despite the nation ranking near the bottom of the developed world when it comes to the gender gap in pay and representation. He has rallied for the abolishment of the Ministry of Gender and Family, claiming it unfairly treats Korean men like “potential sex criminals” (despite South Korean women having some of the most alarming disparities in homicide rate and overall victimization). Yoon has also blamed the nation’s low birth rate on feminism, going so far as to say it stymies healthy relationships with men. 

구글 번역으로 대충 돌려보니 한국의 새로운 대통령은 찐따 랍니다. ㅎㅎㅎ