This study examines how young South Korean men construct narratives of gender (un)fairness by employing intergenerational comparisons within the broader context of meritocratic neoliberal restructuring and intergenerational inequality. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 31 young men, the analysis reveals that participants interpret contemporary gender conflicts as a zero-sum economic struggle, while simultaneously mobilizing intergenerational comparisons to justify their perceptions of injustice. By contrasting their own precarious trajectories with the relative economic stability and mobility of their fathers’ generation, young men articulate a sense of gender (un)fairness grounded in subjective generational comparisons. The findings extend existing theories of masculinity by highlighting generation—as opposed to class, race or sexuality—as a salient axis of masculine differentiation in the South Korean context. Ultimately, we argue that the perceived crisis in masculinity cannot be fully understood through economic frameworks alone but must also be analysed as a masculinity crisis mediated by generational experiences in response to structural and cultural transformation.
Jung et al. (Fri,) studied this question.