Structural Labor Market Changes, Moral Emotion, and Anti-feminism in South Korea

• In Event: Mass Attitudes toward Inequality and Redistribution in East Asia

Abstract

This paper investigates how structural changes in the labor market contributes to the rise of anti-feminist movement from the theoretical lens of social norms and moral emotions. During the last ten years, young male citizens in South Korea have increasingly engaged in anti-feminism movement and displayed political conservatism; this has been attributed to growing youth unemployment. In the extant literature, studies have argued that structural labor market changes have led to the rise of right-wing authoritarianism in other parts of the world. Yet, the studies have mainly focused on Western Europe and the United States and do not take into account different social contexts that give rise to the moral emotions commonly assumed to induce right-wing authoritarianism. I argue that when we focus on how social environment shapes moral emotions---shame and pride in particular, we can understand the political consequences of structural market changes with a more integrative framework. Utilizing a mixed-method approach by combining a nationally representative survey of Korean citizens with qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews, the paper argues that young male citizens' emotional antagonism is influenced by how they process social cues.

Author

• Sungmin Rho, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies