Divisive gender politics fester as South Korea's presidential race heats up
ABCAs South Korea enters a bitter presidential race, Hong Hee-jin is one of many young women who feel that the country's politics has become dominated by discrimination against women, even outright misogyny. Key points: Divisive gender politics have grown in South Korea in recent years The top conservative election candidate has vowed to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Hundreds of women have marched to protest against the "election of misogyny" "Women are being treated like they don't even have voting rights," the 27-year-old office worker in the capital, Seoul, said. Mr Yoon during a presidential debate on Monday repeated an argument that South Korea no longer had any structural barriers to women's success, saying discrimination was now about "individual versus individual". Scrapping the gender ministry could weaken women's rights and "take a toll on democracy," said Chung Hyun-back, a scholar who served as gender-equality minister in 2017-18, under current liberal President Moon Jae-in. Men sensitive to competition from women South Korean conservatives are galvanising around a Trump-like brand of divisive "identity politics" that speaks almost exclusively to men after years of disarray following the 2017 ouster of the country's first female president, Park Geun-hye, over a massive corruption scandal, according to Park Won-Ho, a Seoul National University politics professor.
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