Image: Advertisement for Duo, a popular marriage arrangement site. Credit: Duo.
Professor Dudley Poston of Texas A&M University recently offered a grim diagnosis for young South Korean men: some 700k to 800k “extra” South Korean men, born since the mid-1980s, will not be able to marry unless the country dramatically increases the number of immigrant women. South Korea’s traditional preference for male children led to a surfeit of boys born in the 1980s and 90s, who are now in their 30s.
Although the preference for male children is now a thing of the past, South Korea continues to feel the after-effects of having excess men without prospective marriage partners. The rise of toxic misogyny as a lever for conservative politics is one such after-effect. (See previous coverage, “The Rise of the Incels.”)