71: Sudden Acceleration
June 2nd.
The conflict between men and women and feminism.
Ever since I was terrorized by that four-letter-named woman, I've been studying these two things nonstop.
These people are like illegitimate offspring born in South Korea during the economic crisis.
No one claims them as their own, but tracing their origins leads straight back to the economic crisis at the very top.
The multiple economic crises South Korea endured created massive unemployment and planted bombs in every household.
Fathers who still carried responsibility for their families either suicided or lost their jobs.
Wives who funneled all economic burdens onto their husbands through marriage had no way to replace the lost salary.
This spawned another problem: divorce.
Women who lived through and witnessed it were usually seething with rage, thinking:
"Why am I so helpless and passive?"
"Why can't I solve these problems?"
That's why women in their twenties—including feminists—obsess over being "active."
They had watched everyone around them collapse together or watch it happen from the sidelines.
Anyway, back to the main story: South Korean women scarred by these economic disasters found something to comfort them while fixing the wounds they suffered.
And that something was feminism, already popular in the West like the United States.
Feminism soothed the pain by pinning every disaster on men alone and by comforting women's deepest fears as women.
It became a surprisingly good friend to wounded women, endlessly repeating:
"Men are incompetent, which is why women endured these horrors."
"The patriarchal system they built has structural flaws."
"So the problem is the men."
"Women have done nothing wrong."
"Women are the weak ones in society—what fault could they possibly have?"
Since it wasn't a religion or academic discipline but some unidentified force that kept saying this, how comforting it must have felt.
If every woman back then had been healthy, when her husband lost economic power she would have raged at her own inability to replace him, reflected deeply on why she lacked those skills, trained herself in every direction to solve her own problems, and demanded solutions from society's leaders regarding issues the society itself had created.
But what could anyone have done?
At that time every South Korean woman was already wounded by the economic crisis and far from healthy.
Changing myself is terrifying and difficult, but blaming others is so easy.
That's why the feminist wind swept through our country too.
Men tolerated feminism without a second thought, cowed by women's debt consciousness and the traditional belief that they had to yield to educated women.
Today they're reduced to silence whenever women act up.
But from a woman's perspective, what was actually solved?
Nothing, right?
No, a lot was solved.
By shifting women's duties onto men and society and endlessly expanding women's rights, they created women's quotas and affirmative points that made office jobs and public service irresistibly favorable to women.
They also built a host of welfare systems exclusively for women, and through the crowning institution of basic income they completed their marriage to the government and solved every economic problem that should have been handled during their lifetimes.
So what exactly wasn't solved?
Anyway, feminism spread across South Korea and spawned countless feminists.
The young generation without any debt consciousness toward feminists and who viewed women as competitors began to suck the honey they received when the older generation's sacrifices were reframed as their own.
After enduring until fair competition became impossible and hearing the pitiful male voices, they fought desperately with some women in their twenties and thirties like themselves.
That's the famous male-female conflict.
Actually, I hadn't known much about feminism or the male-female conflict until now.
I wasn't interested in politics and had been busy finding my own path.
But once I found myself in a position to lead the remaining men of South Korea, I naturally started studying.
And I learned everything.
In my current situation, to find a peaceful solution I stayed up all night thinking, and the conclusion was there was no peaceful way.
It was truly unfortunate, but instead of patching things up shoddily and barely surviving, we had to let everything collapse together violently.
History proves it.
Humans know nothing if they haven't experienced it and repeat the same mistakes.
Modern people like to say they're different, but the crisis is already here and still ongoing.
Yet when they can just scrape by, they crawl out slowly.
That's clearly bullshit.
If men hadn't all died and were still alive today, how long would it have taken for this feminist wind to be stopped?
I think even if men and women had fought like madmen before the great upheaval and innocent incidents kept erupting, even after ten years the hatred between them would still be growing.
So this feminist wind would never stop.
That night, in the call with Nayoung auntie, I told her: don't patch it up shoddily—collapse it properly.
Let the entire nation see the collapse nakedly.
And use that to gain public support and suppress the female feminists.
Once the people accurately see the situation in our country, they will recognize feminists as public enemies and, without anyone ordering them, dig into and break the contradictions of feminism themselves.
Then our society can collapse once and rise again.
When I heard my words, Nayoung auntie initially did exactly as I ordered.
The day after our call she flew to Taiwan and met the president, showing the openly passed scene live to the entire nation.
She returned to Korea immediately, summoned the ambassadors of the United States and Japan and other countries that I had pre-arranged, and showed them being turned away at the Blue House.
She also explained through overseas public broadcasters and political broadcasts why this disregard was happening, that it was because of the feminists.
Yes.
Up to this point we really did well in our phone call.
Up to this point.
But after that, instead of making the people who felt the crisis according to my thinking slowly sympathize with Nayoung auntie who was suppressing the women's voices, she moved the Ministry of Justice of South Korea without saying a word to me and filed a petition at the Constitutional Court to dissolve Women's Voice as an unconstitutional party.
Of course our Women's Voice didn't stay silent.
Using the fact that we were ignored in international society and by our men in Japan, Nayoung auntie declared she had no will to protect the constitution and held a rally demanding the president's impeachment together with one million supporters at Gwanghwamun Plaza.
How did I find out?
I was eating dinner and trying to rest when Lee Yeeun came running in and told me there was a special broadcast on the four-letter-named woman being interviewed by a reporter at the candlelight protest, just like the one on Japanese public television.
I was dumbfounded.
If you're going to do something like this, at least tell me beforehand.
What are we supposed to do if this happens suddenly?
Again, the crowd filling the square in front of Gyeongbok Palace all the way to the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin.
Tsk.
There must have been a steady way to check and suppress, not rushing in all at once.
Why did she move so hastily?
Nayoung auntie doesn't know whether she knows or not.
But those female feminists are impressive.
Even in this situation they gathered one million people.
"Hey, Yeeun. As a military expert, how do you think the current situation looks?"
"I think all those reactionary bastards should be rounded up and thrown into a political prison camp."
Sigh..
Hearing a North Korean openly say the words "political prison camp" made me feel a bit strange.
He's probably referring to Aoji coal mine.
Is there still work there?
Shit.. I don't know.
How would I know.
To avoid eye contact I turned my head and asked the person sitting on the opposite side of Yeeun.
"Ayoung-ssi. How does the current situation look diplomatically?"
"With my limited insight it's hard to say this or that..."
"But what is certain is that the whole world seems to be watching the events unfolding in South Korea."
That's true.
From our perspective it's like beating up the feminists, but other governments will see it as a fight for dominance between men and women.
"Um... Then, how do you think things will go from now on?"
"I don't know the details well, but the biggest crossroads seems to be whether the impeachment of President Lee Nayoung will pass through the National Assembly because of the influence of this impeachment rally."
Ha... really.
I've lived to hear the president's impeachment talk again.