Youth conservatism in Korea
Firstly, the rise of young conservatism - this isn't about meninism as far as I can tell. It's genuine spite of the current regime; people are genuinely angry about the state of the economy, and the broken promises of the administration.
While Moon has been acknowledged as having successfully controlled the COVID outbreak. A world class performance in this area but his government also failed to secure vaccines (which was proven to be through government complacency) which is slowing down the economic recovery. People tend to remember the last thing you did in politics.
He proposed housing reforms that didn't even work on paper and pushed them through legislature on sheer party majority - and the expected results happened where people are being forced to move out after their legal two year contracts because rent has risen by over 100% in many areas (and don't even get started on the cost to purchase).
The administration promised higher wages and lower youth unemployment - the reality is that they rushed to increase minimum wage far too quickly with a horribly thought-out plan that spiked youth unemployment. It was so bad that they stopped the plan completely. There is nothing wrong with higher minimum wage - but there was a problem making a 54% increase over 4 years a pledge, starting with 16% without giving small business owners a warning.
They promised to root out nepotism and create a meritocracy within the government to contrast with President PGH and all previous regimes. It's arguably gotten worse, maybe not in numbers but in how blatant they've been about appointing friends and family into positions of power.
The conservative government is currently offering change and a radical one which on paper sounds much better to the youth. Among policies that I've heard of so far are
Controlling house prices by increasing supply of housing. The current government inexplicably stopped house-building to keep prices down (it... it's weird). They pledged to building more homes and approving plans to re-build existing old apartments (think decades) with more floors by relaxing regional height restrictions (think 16~20 → 30~40 floors)
The leader is perhaps the youngest one ever in Korean politics, and he's assembled an inner team with a low average age, promising reforms and changes. He is clearly privileged but he provided a compelling story - while other party leader candidates have an entire team backing their campaigns, he had one schedule manager and used public transport to travel around the country.
They're, at the very least, performatively trying to root out "old politics" with some massive reforms, given the culture. Every member of parliament must pass a computer literacy exam to be able to stand - it has been noted that most will probably fail due to them being dinosaurs. They've also invited politicians from other parties to join them for "fair consideration" of candidacy which is kinda crazy.
Will there be change with conservatives in power? Definitely not as much as promised because politics. Maybe it's all misguided youthful hope, maybe they'll get some of what they want but many seem to have placed it with the conservatives.
The rise of the conservative party among the youth, at least, isn't due to racist, sexist, classist or toxic rhetoric as is commonly seen elsewhere. It's the promise of change from the status quo of the current government alongside a reform of the alternative party itself to be seen to be more youth-friendly than other major parties.
Understand that most of the new young conservatives are refugees from the other side who felt betrayed by Moon, who was sold as someone who truly understood the plight of the youth. Meanwhile the existing conservatives have been beaten so badly in previous elections until recently, that they're willing to give this a try.
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