Pampered sons and performative rage: digital feminist critique of the gendered crisis in South Korean democracy

On 19 January 2025, the Seoul Western District Court was stormed by young men who live-streamed their violence to far-right YouTube channels. This paper examines how this riot reveals a gendered dimension of democratic crisis in South Korea. Democratic backsliding is often analysed through institutional or economic lenses; however, this study focuses on the political weaponisation of a specific gendered affective structure that contributes to shaping South Korea’s political instability. Drawing on digital ethnography of South Korean online forums, I examine how feminist internet users theorise contemporary masculinity through memes and satire. Through their critical articulations, I identify ‘pampered masculinity’, anchored in the digital feminist imaginary of the ‘man-cubating’ system, which diagnoses a society that coddles men, leaves them aggrieved when their expected privileges remain unmet, and legitimises their grievance. I explore how gendered grievance is weaponised through the gamification of politics, as it is enacted as performative interaction in digitally mediated contexts and circulates across platforms and is mobilised in populist politics, extending into offline political action. Tracing this masculinity as articulated in digital feminist critiques, the paper shows how gendered grievance destabilises the constitutional order and materialises in offline political violence.