KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

This research was conducted with the objective of understanding the main issues and background of conflicts in values of young men concerning gender equality. This is based on the assumption that the atmosphere of misogyny and hate speech against women spreading on the Internet and Social Network Service (SNS) started out from such conflicts in gender equality values held by young men. Three actions were undertaken for the research. First, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Semantic Network Analysis (SNA) - unstructured big data analysis methods - were used to collect data from and analyze the “Ilgan Best” (Daily Best) site bulletin board along with comments on news on portal sites via web crawling. Second, a survey was conducted with a total of 1,500 men and women aged 15 to 34 (1,200 men and 300 women) participating. Third, Focus Group Interviews (FGI: 6 groups, a total of 27 people) were carried out with participants including high school students, college students and the general public.

Analysis of the Ilgan Best site and comments on news on Portal sites using LDA and SNA methods showed that in the case of the Ilgan Best site, misogynic expressions represented by the terminology "kimchi nyeo (kimchi woman)" is regarded as one of the important political and social topics in our society. This topic clearly expressed hostility towards women. Another analysis using SNA showed a negative and aversive character against women when daily or neutral issues unrelated to women were mentioned in the “Ilgan Best” (Daily Best) bulletin board. These issues seemed to be closely related to various topics such as social issues, studies, employmen, family, broadcasting, etc. The criticism and hostile expressions used against women included abusive language belittling the level, appearance and sexuality of women. The comments on news on portal sites were found to be more moderate compared to the expressions used on “Ilgan Best” sites , but the topics were mostly criticisms associated with workplace and marriage, lack of or low public awareness on the part of women, and favors enjoyed by women such as excessive requests from women while not performing national defense duty and criticisms related to menstrual leave.

In a survey of about 1,500 young men and women, people were asked of their experience with misogynic articles and comments on the Internet or Social Network Service, level of sympathy to the expressions of hatred against women, experience of uploading articles or comments expressing hatred against women, gender equality awareness, degree of internalized misogyny, etc. The result of the survey revealed the following. Of all respondents, 89.3%, of college students, 84.8% of teenagers (aged 15 to 18), and 83.0% of women answered that they have encountered expressions hostile to women, which accounted for 83.7% of all respondents. Of these respondents, 54.2% of men and 66.7% of male teenagers expressed sympathy with expressions hostile against women, showing a higher level of sympathy with hatred for women in the younger generation. Men sympathizing with women-hating expressions included those who had a low level of gender equality awareness and high levels of hostile gender prejudice or internalized misogyny, men who had a larger gender role conflict, men with low self-esteem, and men with high self-esteem about their appearance. However, no attention was given to their economic level, prospects for future, or outlook for employment. This revealed that the hatred against women is not an issue restricted to the economically-vulnerable class or a few losers, but a general phenomenon among men, and the conflict in gender equality value between men and women exists in a very extensive manner.

About 21.3% (129 people) of the respondents sympathizing with women-haters said that they have experienced uploading misogynic articles or comments, out of which 92.2% were men. This means that an actual 8.6% of all respondents have experience uploading articles expressing hatred toward women. These people had a high level of internalized misogyny and a greater number of people belonged in the group that had relatively bright and optimistic views of life and employment.

The survey showed that social criticism for the "Kimchi Nyeo", the target of major hatred, was permitted as much as men who committed adultery or men who paid for sex. They are the target of harsher criticism than feminists and the target of the strongest emotion of hatred among different types of emotions.

Respondents also pointed out that the people benefiting the most in the Korean society were women in their 20s and 30s. Such response was stronger among teenagers.

Men and women of the younger generation had a bleak outlook for the future, on such topics as employment, marriage, and buying a house. Women respondents showed a bleaker outlook for the future compared to their male respondents. The most favorable government policies supporting the younger generation has been "employment of and increase of jobs for the young generation", "introduction of father's quota system (paternity leave)", "improvement of job culture of long-working hours ", and "policy to cut marriage costs".

Based on such outcomes, the research reviewed policies related to alleviating the phenomenon of misogyny and policies supporting the younger generation, and discussions were made on such topics.