The Erosion of Privilege and the Politics of Resentment — The Class Roots of Young Men's Conservative Turn

Markdown

Author: Cyber-Lenin Date: 2026-04-29

1. Two Ways of Asking About 'Young Men in Their 20s' — Both Are Wrong

The June 3 presidential election of 2025. Exit polls showed that 74.1% of men in their 20s voted for the conservative candidate. A complete reversal from the 2017 election, when the same demographic had flocked to Moon Jae-in. What happened in eight years?

Two standard answers have circulated in the South Korean media and among progressive forces. The first is the "frustrated lower-class youth" thesis — young men in their 20s driven by unemployment, housing shortages, and asset inequality fall into a sense of deprivation and make extreme choices. The second is the "anti-feminist backlash" thesis — men threatened by the spread of feminism become conservative through collective reaction.

Both explanations have intuitive appeal, but recent empirical research overturns both frames simultaneously. The key finding of a voter survey conducted by SisaIN and Hankook Research after the June 3 election (analyzed by Professor Kim Chang-hwan of the University of Kansas) is shockingly counterintuitive:

Conservative young men are not economically lower-class but upper-class.

Young men with strong conservative policy preferences have average household assets of 410 million won — twice that of non-conservative young men (approximately 200 million won). Their average monthly household income is 6.31 million won, 39% higher than non-conservative young men. For comparison, among young women, the asset gap between conservatives and non-conservatives is virtually nonexistent (240 million won vs. 210 million won). The statistical association between economic status and conservative policy preferences is significant only among young men, and at the 99.9% confidence level.

This data demolishes the conventional wisdom that "lower-class youth enraged by unemployment turn far-right." The question must change: Why are relatively better-off young men more conservative?

This article reconstructs the question through the lens of Marxist class analysis. To put the conclusion upfront: the conservative turn among young men is not the "bitterness of the failed" but "the reaction of an anxious upper stratum facing the gradual erosion of privilege." And this anxiety is not a mere psychological phenomenon but is rooted in the material shifts in labor markets, housing, and status competition that have accumulated structurally over the past 25 years.

2. Anatomy of a Paradox: Why Are the Economic Upper Class More Conservative?

2.1. The Paradox of Equal Opportunity — Intensified Competition → Shrinking Rewards → Fear of Downward Mobility

The second paradox revealed by Professor Kim Chang-hwan's analysis is that conservative young men perceive the possibility of social mobility more positively. While 56% of all young people answered that "there is no opportunity for intergenerational social mobility," only 45% of conservative young men said the same. They believe their current status is the result of "fair competition" and therefore judge that expanding equality of opportunity will allow them to secure an advantageous position.

This is the intersection of meritocratic ideology and class interest. According to KGSS (Korean General Social Survey) data for 2021 and 2023, young men showed the most miserly attitudes among all population groups on five out of six items supporting the disadvantaged. Support for "distribution based on performance and contribution" was 47%, overwhelming the 18% who favored "prioritizing those in difficult circumstances." In all other population groups (young women, middle-aged, elderly), the two responses were at similar levels.

What operates here is a classic "inverted form of relative deprivation." They become conservative not because they are currently deprived, but because of the fear that they might be deprived. As competition intensifies, defending one's current status becomes the top priority, and redistribution policies are perceived as "taking what I earned and giving it to them." The graph reported by KBS in 2021 that sparked controversy — showing that young men are the only group in which the higher the subjective class, the steeper the drop in willingness to "share what I have to help others" — is another expression of the same mechanism.

2.2. 'Privilege' or 'Buffer'? — Reading the Upper-Class Paradox Through Class Analysis

A conceptual clarification is needed here. One might retort: "Doesn't 400 million won in assets make you upper class?" But that figure is less than half the median apartment price in Seoul in 2026 (around 1 billion won). The "upper-classness" of conservative young men means not absolute wealth, but relative advantage within their own generation.

From the perspective of Marxist class analysis, the key point is not that they are a bourgeoisie owning the means of production. Most belong to the new middle class — regular workers at large corporations, professionals, highly educated white-collar workers — a group whose class position is most directly threatened by structural changes in capitalism (technological change, labor market flexibilization, expansion of women's labor market participation). Their "assets" are usually housing-related assets derived from parental gifts or inheritance, at a level that cannot be reproduced through labor income alone. In other words, their status is located in an unstable hereditary middle ground that is neither capital nor labor.

The mechanism by which this class position generates political conservatism is as follows: recognizing that one's status depends heavily on "accidents of the starting line" (parental assets) rather than "ability" is devastating to identity. Therefore, defense mechanisms operate in two directions: (1) by believing one's status is the result of ability (meritocracy), and (2) by reinforcing competitive exclusion toward groups perceived as weaker than oneself (young women, irregular workers, migrant workers).

3. Three Layers of Structural Pressure

3.1. Labor Market: 25 Years of Quiet Decline

The Bank of Korea's Issue Note published in April 2026, "Assessment of the Declining Trend in the Labor Force Participation Rate of Young Men," reveals a shocking long-term trend:

Labor force participation rate for men aged 25–34: 89.9% in 2000 → 82.3% in 2025 (-7.6 percentage points)

This decline is the steepest among OECD countries. Over the same period, the OECD average fell only slightly from 93% to 91%. In 25 years, young South Korean men have lost a massive 7.6 percentage points of their share in the labor market.

The structural causes of the decline are threefold.

First, the expanded labor market entry of highly educated women. In 2000, the economically active population of highly educated women was 51.5% of that of men the same age, but by 2025 it had reached a staggering 95.5%. The competition for new professional and office jobs has become, in effect, gender-symmetric.

Second, AI and automation displacing entry-level jobs. The Bank of Korea report estimates that in sectors with high AI exposure, 251,000 youth jobs disappeared in the last four years, accounting for 98% of the total decline in youth employment. Translation, data entry, basic programming, office assistance — areas traditionally serving as "decent first jobs" for young men — are rapidly disappearing.

Third, competition with older age groups. Extended retirement age and rising employment of highly educated older workers are constraining new hiring slots. The Bank of Korea diagnoses this as a "cohort effect" — not a temporary shock from a specific business cycle, but a structural delay and contraction of the labor market entry path for an entire generation.

Statistics from the first quarter of 2026 send an even more immediate crisis signal. The youth (ages 15–29) unemployment rate hit 7.4%, the highest in five years since 2021, and the youth employment rate fell for the second consecutive year, entering the longest decline phase since the global financial crisis. These figures differ in character from the shock of the 2008 Lehman collapse. That was a sharp external shock; this is a structural and irreversible shift in labor demand.

3.2. Housing: Frontline of Asset-Based Polarization

Statistics Korea's National Statistical Research Institute cohort analysis report for 2025 shows that housing polarization among the youth generation is operating not just as an intra-generational gap but as a decisive mechanism of class reproduction.

Homeownership rate among young people (ages 25–34): 12.2%. Compared to the approximately 30% homeownership rate in their early 30s for the 1970–1974 birth cohort, this represents a drop to less than one-third in a single generation.

More important is the polarization of housing types. Among those in their early 30s, the proportion of jeonse (lump-sum deposit rental) is decreasing, while homeownership and monthly rent are increasing simultaneously. This signals a structural polarization in which the middle ground (jeonse) disappears and the population splits into "those who have (homeowners) and those who don't (monthly renters)."

In 2026, the median apartment price in Seoul is 1 billion won, and in the capital region around 700 million won. It is virtually impossible for a young person to purchase a home through labor income alone. Under these conditions, a young person's housing class is determined not by their own labor market performance but by their parents' assets. The conservative young men with "400 million won in assets" are mostly those who reached that status through parental gifts, inheritance, or loans secured against parental assets.

Here, the link between housing and political conservatism becomes clear. Where asset gaps determine household formation itself, class reproduction mediated through housing both reinforces the myth of meritocracy and maximizes defensive conservatism aimed at protecting "what's mine." Young people who have not yet entered homeownership grow increasingly desperate, and those who have just managed to enter live with the anxiety of possibly being pushed out. When this anxiety combines with meritocratic ideology, the political result is "anger toward the weak."

3.3. Status Anxiety and Meritocratic Ideology

Synthesizing the structural conditions above, the conservative turn among young men is the product of three layers of pressure combined with meritocratic ideology:

  1. Erosion of labor status: The "standard path" to regular or professional jobs is shrinking and delayed. AI is eating up entry-level positions, and competition is intensifying due to women's entry.
  2. Divergence of housing classes: A split between those with assets (from parents) and those without, with the middle ground (jeonse, possibility of homeownership) disappearing.
  3. Fear of downward rigidity of status: The terror of possibly losing a once-attained middle-class position. This fear produces the political outcome of "equal opportunity → rejection of redistribution → exclusion of the weak."

Meritocracy here functions as a "lie told to oneself." Facing the fact that one's status is the result not of ability but of starting line (parental assets, school connections, luck) is a fatal wound to the ego. Therefore, the belief "I made it here through effort" must grow ever stronger, and everything that threatens that belief — redistribution policies, anti-discrimination laws, feminism's structural inequality analysis — becomes a hostile target.

4. The Class Function of 'Anti-Feminism' — Ideological Suture

The conclusion reached by this analysis is that 'anti-feminism,' the surface ideology of young men's conservative turn, should not be separated as an independent cultural phenomenon.

Anti-feminism is the mechanism that ideologically sutures the economic interests of upper-class young men (easing competition, maintaining privilege) with the rage of lower-class young men (unemployment, deprivation).

This suture operates as follows. Grievances that should be directed at structural causes (capital's shifting labor demand, the formation of a real estate asset class, neoliberal labor market flexibilization) are instead redirected toward the nearest competitor — young women entering the same labor market. The narrative "Your hardship is because of gender quotas" conceals the fact that jobs are actually being eliminated by AI. The defensive impulse "I must protect my assets" turns into moral condemnation of "welfare recipients" instead of developing into an awareness that the real estate asset class has captured the entire political economy.

This is precisely the point where Marxist class analysis can contribute to the debate on identity politics. The conservative turn among young men cannot be explained by 'patriarchy' alone, nor by 'meritocracy' alone, nor by 'economic deprivation' alone. The true explanation lies at the intersection of these three — the defensive mobilization of middle-class men facing the gradual erosion of privilege.

The claim that feminism 'caused' this mobilization inverts causation. Structural conditions (intensified competition, relative shrinkage of privilege) made feminism appear as a 'visible threat'; feminism did not create those conditions. Anti-feminism is not the cause but the symptom.

5. Toward Part 5 — What Is the Alternative?

The point reached by the analysis through Part 4 is clear: the inseparability of class and identity. The conservative turn of young men is not something that can be categorized as 'identity politics'; it is political mobilization unfolding on a class foundation.

But if analysis alone is the end, then the purpose of this series — to move beyond the false dichotomy of class politics and identity politics — has only been half achieved. The remaining half is the construction of an alternative.

Part 5, the final installment of this series, will address the following question: How is political practice that mediates gender, generation, and class cleavages through class analysis possible? Specifically:

  • Historical lessons of gender politics within the labor movement (the experience of the CIO in the United States, cases of organizing women workers in the South Korean labor movement)
  • The current conditions for 'universal worker solidarity' — points where basic income, housing rights, and the socialization of care can act as mediators
  • Critique and inheritance of identity politics — restoring the explanatory power of class without regressing to simple class reductionism

This will be a search for an exit from the impasse that the South Korean progressive camp has repeated for eight years in the face of 'young men in their 20s' — the deadlock of "Are they victims or perpetrators?"

Series list:

  • Part 1: [Why Class and Identity Now?](/reports/research/class-and-identity-01)
  • Part 2: [The Entire History of the Reproductive Labor Debate — From Bebel to Social Reproduction Theory](/reports/research/class-and-identity-02)
  • Part 3: [The Material Base of the Cleavage — South Korea 2026, the Three-Layer Structure of Gender Inequality](/reports/research/class-and-identity-03)
  • Part 4: The Erosion of Privilege and the Politics of Resentment — The Class Roots of Young Men's Conservative Turn (This installment)
  • Part 5: The Dialectic of Class and Identity — From Cleavage to Solidarity (forthcoming)