What South Korea's Latest Political Belief Survey Tells Us About Population Decline

When people speak of the various reasons that the world is increasingly seeing a widespread dearth of marriages and babies, unsurprisingly, cultural factors feature prominently. But those cultural conversations often revolve around changes in social values. The rise of individualism has made youths question the value of sacrificing their own preferences and interests in exchange for negotiating with a lifelong partner. The prevalence of the nuclear family has made it burdensome to raise a child. The increase in female labor participation has led women to prioritize career advancement over family responsibilities. 

These are all valid and important factors, but a recent survey helped me see that they are far from an exhaustive list of the ways modern culture discourages families. Major media outlets in South Korea recently reported on results from surveys of citizens' political views, categorizing them along the widely accepted left-right spectrum. One shocking outcome was that more than one in four men in their 20s and 30s were evaluated as having far-right political views, even though less than 10% of them self-identified as conservative.

At first glance, those worried about population decline might see these results positively. After all, if there is anything that unites right-wingers, it's the belief in family values: more marriages and kids, if only to ensure that the future of the country does not need to depend on importing foreign workers whose cultural values do not align with the native ones. But look closer at other parts of the results, and one could see that the young men's pro-family turn is not simply a sudden epiphany that they need to save their country by reviving traditional beliefs. 

The survey results show that the young men are uncharacteristically far-right compared to the rest of South Korean society. They made up more than half of the participants who identified as conservative, even though they made up less than one-sixth of the total surveyed population. Worse yet, their marriageable counterparts, women in their 20s and 30s, were identified as overwhelmingly left-leaning, with only 15% even holding right-wing views, of which a paltry proportion could be slotted into the far-right bucket.

Needless to say, marriages and childbirth are not individual endeavors. Young men hoping for families need to find partners who share the same priorities. In South Korea, at least, finding such partners is increasingly difficult. Even if the left-leaning young woman would eventually want to have children, it is hardly conceivable that they would voluntarily do so with someone from the opposite end of the political spectrum. They would worry about the compatibility of values over household responsibilities and how to educate their offspring. 

As the majority of women hesitate to associate themselves with male counterparts to their political right, the spurned young men are incentivized to shift even further to the right. The ranks of involuntary celibates swell with members who seethe at "their" women supposedly corrupted by left-wing views of female emancipation and empowerment. While women may see a lack of romantic, marital, and familial attachment as a personal freedom, the incel frame them as almost criminal in intent, sapping society's strength and the masculinity of their potential mates.

South Korea may just be a harbinger of a global phenomenon. While governments lavish cash upon speed dates, kindergartens, and childrearing subsidies, would it also be wise to invest in platforms for young men and women to just get together and talk? Before they can become romantically involved, a first step may just be to understand their ideological differences. When their worldviews differ so much, neither side, much less the government, can simply proclaim that a middle ground can easily be found. Discussions can at least initiate some semblance of effort to stem the divergence.

Such discussions will have the added benefit of helping us see that the cultural factors pushing people against marriage and childbirth are not always too large for individual agency to matter. One single person cannot stem the rise of individualism or nuclear families, but they can reflect their own political views. In particular, if young men are truly serious about wanting families and children, they need to make compromises on their own values to make themselves a bit more palatable to women whose worlds are increasingly different from theirs.