Liberal candidate Lee Jae-myung won a comfortable victory in South Korea’s snap presidential election. But far-right forces are still gaining strength, especially among young men attracted by misogynist scapegoating of women.

On June 3, a sixty-year-old maverick candidate from South Korea’s liberal Democratic Party (DPK) won the presidency in a snap election following a botched coup six months earlier by former president Yoon Suk-yeol. On the surface, Lee Jae-myung’s victory seemed like a foregone conclusion.

However, lurking behind the outcome was the reality of a young democracy riven by the rightward drift of establishment politics and the rapid rise of the far right. In contrast, South Korea’s labor movement is divided, at a moment when some on the Left are striving to navigate the c

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