I DM'd a Korean presidential candidate and ended up building his core campaign (opens in new tab)

You caution against a knee jerk reaction to Lee’s anti-feminist views but the background you provide does not actually justify your implication that South Korea may be a special case.

A feeling that “the pendulum has swung too much in the other direction” characterizes pretty much any modern reactionary anti-feminist movement in any country. And like in other countries, these feelings aren’t really borne out by the stats [0].

As far as I can tell, the only unique element of the South Korean anti-femenist movement is how mainstream it is. But that doesn’t mean whatever (knee jerk) reaction one might have to an anti-feminist politician at home wouldn’t apply to one in South Korea.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality_in_South_Kor...

> However, many young men feel like the pendulum has swung too much to the other direction. Society still expects men to do “manly things” (mandatory army service, physical labour etc) but girls around their age get policy benefits instead. I’m not going to into whether this feeling is justified or not.

Oh that’s okay I’ll say it - privileging women over men, and enacting a double standard where men are expected to comfort to a gender role whole women aren’t is NOT FEMINISM.

Feminism is not ‘the pendulum.’ If every aim of feminism were realized, men and women and all people would be equal. The goal of feminism is not a retargeting of supremacy, it is the destruction of supremacy in the first place.

There is really only one kind of person who throws around terms like ‘anti-feminism’ and ‘the pendulum had swung too far’ and I don’t think I need to waste my breath describing them, because every single one of us reading is intimately familiar with them.

Yeah, I'd express doubt. I do agree that South Korean feminist movement contains some batshit crazy elements, but those anti-feminist young Korean men aren't much better.

Both sides love to fixate on crazy crime stories to make themselves feel like victims. If a Korean man murders a woman, that's femicide and an example of how Korean men behave in general. If a bunch of Korean women share nude photos of men in a website, that's how they're wannabe rapists and an example of how Korean women behave in general. Yada yada.

The young men also opposes any kind of DEI, whether it's for women, rural provinces, or people from poor families, thinking that they are the competent people oppressed by the society. They also denigrate older men in their forties (who happen to be much more left-wing in general), thinking that those oldies were the lucky generation because when they were young jobs were plenty and there were less competition.

Never mind that those old men started their careers with 6-day weeks and horrible safety conditions. Such jobs are still plenty as they were in 1990s, it's just that they're so comparatively shitty that only migrant workers would be willing to fill those positions.

Funnily enough, it looks like fewer and fewer young men are supporting Lee Jun-Seok in recent months. It looks like Yoon's political suicide (via martial law) for the conservative faction did affect Lee in the long term. (It didn't help Lee Jun-Seok that the new president, Lee Jae-Myung, is more politically savvy and is publicly willing to talk about whether young men are feeling the "reverse discrimination" and what the government could do about it.)

It really reads as exactly the evil victim mentality of the people wildly overrepresented at the top that we get in the US. The military service thing is obviously a real issue, though, but I don't know why that wouldn't be solved by forcing women into mandatory public service in the same way a man with a disability would be. Is it just that Korea doesn't have the social services to absorb the manpower?

Military service is also a benefit that women don't get, too. They don't get to make the connections in the military that would help them along in their careers.

> They just want to feel like they are treated equally in society.

Shouldn't you wait until your country is half run by women before claiming oppression? Until your boss and CEO are as likely to be women as men? I feel like this stuff it bought into by marginal men who are oppressed by other men of a higher class, and average women catch all the flack because they're simultaneously accessible and denying marginal men what they want on a daily basis. They don't see upper-class men as enemies because they don't ever see upper-class men; when they hear about upper-class cruelty, they fantasize about the revenge they would take if they were in power, especially on the women who say no.

In Korea, the anger about conscription just gives them a semi-legitimate gripe that seems like it should be taken away by conscripting women.

For anyone out of the loop, Edwards was caught in an infidelity scandal and his candidacy collapsed. OP didn’t do such a bad job with IT that the campaign failed lol

Thanks for sharing — that sounds like an amazing experience.

It’s interesting how similar opportunities can happen in totally different places.

Glad it turned into something meaningful for you.

Seconded. Political campaigns are fun. And if you're not sure it's for you, start by volunteering for a local campaign.

This politician is basically a Korean knockoff of Charlie Kirk.

In his 40s, touring the country "debating" college kids. Selling middle-school level economic arguments that appeal to online community addicts.

Basically a spokesman for the "I tell it like it is" crowd.

These parts jumped out:

> He has been noted for his staunch antifeminism and support from South Korean idaenam (young men).

…

> He became popular in the 20s and 30s due to his opposing stance against political correctness such as "faux feminism," introducing reforms supporting meritocracy rather than outright equality of outcome.

I know only a little about Korean politics, enough to know that it’s very dramatic with wild stuff happening, but not really to understand it. From the outside, the politics around feminism there seems rather strange.

> Lee was an early proponent of the finger pinching conspiracy theory, a claim alleging hidden radical feminist messaging in advertisements

Speaking of strange.

> Lee's advocacy of merit-based processes such as exam scores, credentials, and measurable qualifications has been viewed by supporters as aligning with younger voters' expectations of fair competition.

I suppose all the political content was left out of the linked article, but it would be nice to have more context.

Also, looks like he’s at least somewhat technical:

> After graduating from Harvard University in 2007, Lee returned to Korea to perform military duties working as a software developer (alternative military service as industrial technical personnel) at 'Innotive', an image browsing software startup, a subsidiary of Nexon.

> After completing his national service, Lee prepared to start his own venture. He received funding from the venture startup program backed by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups on 5 August 2011 and founded Classe Studio: an ed-tech startup that developed personalized tutoring software and workplace training applications.

Koreans barely use Wikipedia so understandably that contains very little. They use Namuwiki, which is the much better link in this case (warning, machine translated): https://en.namu.wiki/w/%EC%9D%B4%EC%A4%80%EC%84%9D/%EB%85%BC...

Are there any other countries in the world that use a different wiki than Wikipedia as their main wiki, except for those where Wikipedia is banned? Korea seems like the only one.

Thanks for the question!

I’d prefer not to dive into policy positions here — the main focus of my post was the product-building process and what it was like to work behind the scenes.

He won't answer this because he knows it's abhorrent...

the technical part was interesting but im not sure this is a candidate I'd want to be associated with publicly....i guess most English speakers just see "oh cool a candidate in a country i have parasocial relationship with through consumer pop culture" and not the horrific ugly side of Korean politics and some of its candidates, Lee in particular.

I’m glad the story itself was enjoyable regardless of political alignment.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed it :)

Thank you! It was chaotic but fun to build something real under that time pressure.

Glad you enjoyed the read!

> Commentors here are not from Korea

HN is an international place. Even just Silicon Valley itself is.

Thank you so much for reading it. I’m really glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.

Thanks for reading! I wanted to tell the story as it happened, rather than turning it into a set of principles or advice.

Happy to hear you enjoyed the ride :)

I’m deeply honored. Thank you.

Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed it!