Throwing uppercuts, ‘K-Trump’ candidate divides South Korea on gender

Seoul: Yoon Suk-yeol throws an uppercut as he enters the stage. The crowd chants the 61-year-old’s name as he prepares for the most important fight of his life. There are no boxing gloves on the former lawyer – just a grey turtleneck and the power of a public prosecutor’s voice.

Yoon’s signature move is bold, angry and ambitious. Uppercuts are thrown at close range to surprise an opponent, and Yoon is within striking distance of his rival – Lee Jae-myung – who rose from childhood poverty to become the party nominee to succeed South Korean President Moon Jae-In.

Yoon rallies the crowd in Seoul. Credit: Instagram

On Wednesday, the two will fight what Lee has described as South Korea’s most “unlikeable election”. Yoon, the front-runner populist has vowed to abolish the Gender Equality Ministry, clamp down on big government and investigate the Moon administration over donation scandals.

Lee, who once said he wanted to become a “successful Bernie Sanders”, is struggling to gain traction in an intense campaign race that, like the United States, relies on motivating citizens to vote through a relentless cycle of campaign stops and stump speeches across the country.

During lunch on Monday, Yoon whipped up the crowd gathered in Seoul’s Pyeongchon Central Park into a frenzy. About 5000 people joined the rally, dozens waved Korean and American flags, one wearing a tiger jumpsuit, while others dressed up their dogs in support of Yoon’s conservative People Power Party.

South Korean presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol takes part in an election rally in Anyang ahead of Wednesday’s vote.Credit: Sean Na

Many are angry at Moon’s Democratic Party government. They believe that Moon has hurt the economy through his COVID-19 handling, let house prices go out of control and divided men and women through gender policies. Those gathered include small business owners, retirees and young office workers who feel passionate enough to leave their desks in Korea’s notoriously strict corporate culture to attend a political rally. They worry Lee, a liberal Democrat, will do the same.

“We the people summoned candidate Yoon to this election,” said Lee Sang-chul, 67, a small business owner. “He will sacrifice himself to better our lives and restore our democracy.”

A trump rally feel to the campaigns: Supporters of the main presidential candidates take part in rallies ahead of Wednesday’s election.Credit: Eryk Bagshaw

Kim Beom-jin, 34, an office worker and his wife Lee Yeun-hee, 33, a preschool teacher, struggled to buy a property when they got married in 2020 – average apartment prices have doubled in Seoul since 2017. They are anxious about job security and believe Lee has engaged in a culture war on gender issues that have divided Korean society.

“I had to be here to support Yoon,” said Kim, who used his lunch hour to join the rally, describing Yoon’s campaign promises to deliver jobs and houses to young Koreans as “the most trustworthy he has ever heard”.

Lee Yeun-hee, 33, a pre-school teacher, and her husband Kim Beom-jin, 34, an office worker joined the campaign rally on Tuesday.Credit: Eryk Bagshaw

Gender, perhaps more than any other non-economic issue, has dominated this campaign, after a series of #MeToo scandals divided Korean opinion and women gained confidence in their economic and political power. Seoul has seen feminist and anti-feminist rallies, with rival groups including Ordinary Men Who Speak Out (feminist) and New Men’s Solidarity (anti-feminists) engaged in slanging matches during the campaign.

Yoon has cultivated support among young men in their 20s and 30s – the key swing vote in the election – by painting Moon’s Gender Ministry as divisive while appealing to sexist perceptions that men had been forced out of jobs by women.

“Lee seems to purposefully want to divide our society by gender,” said Kim.

Park Sung-min, the president of MIN political consulting, said, “young men especially think that they are the ones being discriminated against by what they think are anti-male policies”.

In December Yoon claimed feminism has “been politicised to make it emotionally hard for men and women to date”.

Lee Jae-myung, presidential nominee of the ruling Liberal Party, delivers a speech to about 500 people near the post office in Yeouido, Seoul, on Tuesday.Credit: Sean Na

The comments are deliberately incendiary but they appeal to young men who feel disenfranchised and some young women who support them. That perception was turbocharged in 2020 after the government removed a bonus point system that gave men extra benefits in the job market after they finished their compulsory military service.

“The most pressing campaign issue, at least for me and my friends, is the gender divide,” said Cho Min-jin, 20, who studies sustainable development and cooperation at Yonsei University.

“Most pressing campaign issue is gender”: Student Cho Min-jin, 20, outside Yonsei University on Tuesday.Credit: Sean Na

“The current government has divided us between feminists and anti-feminists. So-called for-women policies have rather brought social discrimination against men,” she said. “Yes, the tight job market and housing prices surge are also pressing issues. However, the gender issues outweigh the other two, at least for me.”

Jae Jok Park, an assistant professor of foreign policy at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, said Yoon had engaged in a “Trump-style campaign to get young voters”.

“In order to win the election Yoon has showcased a macho campaign. But I don’t think it will reflect in actual policy,” he said.

Yoon, who styles himself as “the servant of the people”, is a political novice who owns a $3.3 million apartment in Seoul’s exclusive Gangnam district. The lawyer made his name as a brash prosecutor, but Park believes once in office he is likely to delegate to experts in his cabinet.

“First we need to replace the Democratic Party and send them home,” Yoon told the crowd on Monday.

Lee is a political veteran who went to work in a factory as a teenager to support his family only to have his arm shattered in an accident. The 57-year-old went on to become a human rights lawyer and governor of Gyeonggi province, before being appointed to succeed Moon last year.

In upmarket Yeouido on Tuesday, Seoul’s version of Wall Street, Lee attempted to recast his social welfare background by appealing to the business community. Eloquent but softly spoken, about 500 people gathered to hear one of his final campaign speeches. Lee promised to run the country like a CEO and develop policies that promote “work-life balance”. His campaign promised a safe pair of hands to continue the work of the Moon era, but few of his most ardent supporters were moved beyond the obligatory cheers.

Yoon Hye-young, a 26-year-old education consultant at Lee’s rally, said she was not convinced he was going to be able to win on Wednesday night.

“I’m not sure if the president needs to be like a competitive CEO, as Lee claims,” she said. “But I do believe he would do good things for the country.”

The fish shop in Ssangmun-dong, Seoul, made famous by where Netflix’s Squid Game.Credit: Sean Na

In Ssangmun-dong, the Seoul suburb where the Netflix series Squid Game was filmed, local businesses have little faith in either candidate. This area of Seoul has struggled with the employment woes made famous by lead character Seong Gi-hun.

Song Jeom-soon runs the fish shop now seen by more than 142 million people around the world, but that has done little to drive business back as inflation takes a toll on household spending.

“Right now, the whole country is faltering, and we need a good president, regardless of his regional upbringings, to unite us,” said Song.

Her neighbour Grace, who runs a fish ball and tempura stall laughed that she was “exhausted because this country is being run so well”.

“No, this country isn’t being run well. It’s getting harder to make our ends meet. After the Squid Game was aired, our flea market enjoyed transient popularity mostly from tourists,” she said.

“But as the COVID-19 pandemic has gotten worse in recent months, our market has gone back to the same-old, barely anyone strolling along this aisle in the daytime.”

Yoon and Lee have 24 hours to convince Grace and Song that they have what it takes to get customers back to Ssangmun-dong.

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