Narratives of Success and Failure in Ressentiment: Assuming Victimhood and Transmuting Frustration among Young Korean Men

In this article we examine toxic masculinity, anti-feminist, anti-globalization and anti-military conscription positions in the narratives of what constitutes success and failure among young South Korean men during the covid-19 pandemic. Misogynistic accounts attributed to the globalised effects of neoliberalism and its evolution through South Korean meritocratic competition, and compounded by the social isolation of the pandemic, remain a puzzle psychologically, despite their toxic emotionality. We use a novel analytical framework which maps the emotional mechanism of ressentiment by tracing its constituent components: moral victimhood, indignation, a sense of destiny, powerlessness, and transvaluation. In an empirical plausibility probe we analyse qualitative surveys with young Korean men and examine the content of the far-right social sharing site Ilbe (일베) which hosts conversations of young men about success and self-improvement. Our findings show envy, shame and inefficacious anger transvaluated into to moral victimhood, misogynistic hatred, vindictiveness against women and feminists and anti-globalisation stances. We discuss how the content of these narratives of success and failure relate to the electoral win of the right-wing People Power party in March 2022 which capitalised on anti-feminist grievances. We also consider the socio-political consequences of ressentimentful narratives in the highly gendered and polarized South Korean society, and expand the study of ressentiment outside the context of Western democracies where it has been most extensively elaborated.