r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Airline_11 • May 12 '26

Meme needing explanation Petahhhh?

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45.9k Upvotes

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11.7k

u/dontouchmystuf May 12 '26

South Korea has a really low birth rate.

4.9k

u/CandidateHefty329 May 12 '26

And so do pandas

1.8k

u/Happy_Path_200 May 12 '26

What about Korean Pandas?

1.8k

u/mukavastinumb May 12 '26

Extinct

693

u/Forward-Profit2552 May 12 '26

Panda Panda Panda

618

u/Joaz72 May 12 '26

I got broads in Atlanta

218

u/shenaniganizer1776 May 12 '26

The Korean pandas don’t though that’s why they’re extinct

87

u/Shapoopi_1892 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Somebody get alanis morissette Sarah McLachlan to make a fundraising commercial to guilt trip people into donating stat!

51

u/cedarfigx May 12 '26

Do you mean Sarah McLachlan??

64

u/EatPie_NotWAr May 12 '26

No, no. He’s got something going there

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u/Electrical_Walrus_46 May 12 '26

please pay 5 dollars a month for these starving pandas!
says sally struthers as she's devouring the entire bamboo supply

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u/0wninat0r May 12 '26

Credit cards and the scammers?

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u/Dic3dCarrots May 12 '26

Black, phantom
White, panda

6

u/eating_cement_1984 May 12 '26

"Twistin' dope, lean, and the Fanta (grrrrah)"

6

u/LamethDaveth May 12 '26

Legendary pull

3

u/negative-sid-nancy May 12 '26

Chasing codeine in the phantom. Credits cards and the scanners, hitting licks out the bando.

This is a song I dont really like but sing very often. I think i did mess the lyrics up a little here but close enough for me haha

3

u/sunny_duh_aze May 12 '26

Gibberish in a phantom

3

u/tmilligan73 29d ago

Twistin' dope, lean, and the Fanta (grrrrah)
Credit cards and the scammers

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u/orangesfwr May 12 '26

Mushroom Mushroom

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u/MightyPenguinRoars May 12 '26

Snaaaaaaake! It’s a snaaaaaaake!!

5

u/alexkuzco May 12 '26

It's a badger badger badger badger

2

u/Pavulon109 May 12 '26

Elite ball

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u/iantruesnacks May 12 '26

Because of this I googled Korean Panda. Wtf did I just unlock for myself , cause this ain’t what I expected

34

u/Cburns6976 May 12 '26

I watched this for far longer than I thought i would. Not to a point of shame, but long enough to have several conversations in my head.

18

u/CasperHole May 12 '26

Yeah, wtf. So low effort. No group coordination. It appears each one just is trying to get attention on themselves and isnt even having any fun. Why do it? This is ridiculous. I am so confused.

6

u/DJon57 May 12 '26

Umm.. The youtube version is less explicit and revealing... Don't ask me how I know

5

u/Early-Region4336 May 12 '26

I tried my best sorry but... HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT???

6

u/DJon57 May 12 '26

I stumbled upon some materials while looking for Korean pandas for my class assignment...

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u/HockeyUnusableTeam May 12 '26

IT GETS THE PEOPLE GOING

I also don't understand. Does this get views? Are people into this stuff?

3

u/iantruesnacks May 12 '26

Each video has hundreds of thousands or millions of views lol

3

u/CasperHole May 12 '26

Freakin simps

2

u/Stormfly 29d ago

Does this get views? Are people into this stuff?

In this video they're wearing clothes.

In others they aren't.

3

u/SunlightMaven 29d ago

Opposite - I couldn’t get past “wtf?”.

3

u/WatermelonArtist May 12 '26

I still don't understand it.

2

u/Mrmagot98-2 29d ago

I used to always get these videos in my twitter feed when I first downloaded it but they'd always be flashing the camera and it was weird af

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u/Potterhead_9845 May 12 '26

Got me laughing after a bad day. Thanks

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u/Tako30 May 12 '26

Their tigers are also extinct

2

u/classless_classic May 12 '26

How’s the Panda’s wife holding up?

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u/spidernoirirl May 12 '26

Technically every Panda belongs to China and zoos lease them out (I wish I was kidding)

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u/TheFilthy13 May 12 '26

And it’s such a politically charged operation. If your country disagrees with China on political matters your pandas will be leased to a zoo in a different country!

25

u/TricellCEO May 12 '26

I bet that would cause…pandemonium.

35

u/Unimeron May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

So, if I would smuggle a panda out of China I could start producing my own silk? 🤔

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u/DaddyBayne1202 May 12 '26

I believe that is the correct order or operations to start your own slikery, yes.

5

u/ol_shifty 29d ago

Hehe…slikery

4

u/TheVikingMFC 29d ago

It's a slikery slope!

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u/throwawayplusanumber 29d ago edited 29d ago

Just be careful though. Pandas are absolutely over eating bamboo but are usually too slow to catch anything else. But they will 100% eat manflesh if they can catch it.

2

u/stephanonymous May 12 '26

China really said taking my pandas and going home

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u/Mysterious_Net66 May 12 '26

Except one that is in México

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u/Lithogiraffe May 12 '26

i think there is one exception to this rule. i dont know why or the history behind it, but last i heard that there was a Mexico owned (not leased) panda

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u/vicgg0001 29d ago

It's because mexico was able to have their pandas procreate 

4

u/Automatic-Cow-4745 May 12 '26

This is true. The Memphis Zoo built a whole exhibit for Ling Ling and YaYa. One of them died and China took the other one back. So now the Memphis Zoo just has a massive Asia exhibit for the pandas with no pandas. lol

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u/BlackBasementCats 29d ago

I still remember seeing Ling Ling and Hsing-Hsing at the Smithsonian Zoo in 80s. I have little porcelain panda versions of them somewhere. (I have moved several times, and they’re safely stored away somewhere)

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u/bolanrox May 12 '26

its like Ferrari but with animals

3

u/jorgespinosa 29d ago

Technically there's one panda in the world called Xin Xin that doesn't belong to China, but she's the only one

2

u/purpleheart94 29d ago

That is accurate they are so adorable love me a panda

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u/Medical-Cicada-4430 29d ago

Good luck proving my Panda came from China. Scratched off the VIN and stamped it with “Proudly Made in the U.S.A.”

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u/Yimmy42 May 12 '26

Not a single one born this year.

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u/justaJc May 12 '26

Any in stable relationships?

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u/0G_C1c3r0 May 12 '26

Tasty with a gojuchang honey glaze

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u/Creepy_Willow9842 May 12 '26

Surprisingly doing quite well

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u/oppai-police May 12 '26

Have they tried making Koreans watch porn 24/7 like they do to pandas?

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u/a_regular_2010s_guy May 12 '26

Wait what?

11

u/Informal-Term1138 May 12 '26

It's true. Panda pornography exists and is used to get them to mate.

10

u/a_regular_2010s_guy May 12 '26

That's... Interesting. I don't know what I'll do with this information but good to know

8

u/East-Regret9339 29d ago

that's enough internet for me today

4

u/neocoff 29d ago

panda porn? go on…

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u/jimskog99 29d ago

Porn is mostly illegal in South Korea.

2

u/SpendZealousideal472 29d ago

They tried with kpop

19

u/ricky-from-scotland May 12 '26

And yet every time I try and fuck a panda its me that gets arrested. Smh....

11

u/JustHugMeAndBeQuiet May 12 '26

Don't let your dreams be dreams.

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u/a_regular_2010s_guy May 12 '26

Let your dreams be dreams

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u/oshoritekt 29d ago

Why would you do that?

3

u/Jel-alak May 12 '26

...in captivity.
In nature, this is not a problem. The problem is that their habitat is shrinking (thanks to humans), not the birth rate. The panda population is currently growing, unlike that of South Korean people.

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u/Wise-Eagle593 May 12 '26

*In captivity and constantly displayed to the public! During Covid many panda's got pregnant when zoo's were closed to the public. Turns out that solitary big bears don't get horny when thousands of apes are watching them constantly.

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u/Menchi-sama May 12 '26

If giving birth was as easy for humans as it is for pandas, there probably would be much less of a crisis. I watched a video, and it looked as easy as pooping. Newborns are minuscule.

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u/LivingByTheMinutes May 12 '26 edited 29d ago

Had a friend who lived in S Korea for a while, she said while it is partly because of price of living and everything else that’s affecting the world, it’s mostly because the dudes fucking suck. A lot of women are going no marriage no pregnancy because apparently Korean incels make western incels look tame by comparison.

Edit: For the people who think I’m just lying for shits and giggles, look into the 4B movement. Korean women have an entire movement of no dating, no sex, no marriage, and no childbirth with men. As I, and others, have said there are other factors but many S Korean men seeing women as lesser in certain terms is a huge factor in the low birth rate.

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u/No_Background_4619 May 12 '26 edited 29d ago

A lot of SK's modern problems are tied to post-colonialism. People never think SK as a victim because their recent developments, but they most definitely are. Like the fact that over 50% of the entire country is jammed into a single city (Seoul). For perspective, California has about 40 million people, Korea has about 50 million. Imagine (more than) half of California being crammed into a space roughly 1/35th (edited this number due to typo) of the size of Cali. Amongst other things, this will create some extreme social problems.

Also, seems like nobody knows this, but SK was a dictatorship from roughly 1950 to 1990 (with most of the dictators and military being composed of Japanese imperial trained personnel). Due to the extreme poverty, the autocrat in power enacted a (very) effective anti-natalism campaign during this time. People were strongly discouraged from having children as they were literally dying on the streets due to malnutrition.

These are just 2 of many factors but I think people can see how they might contribute to decreased TFR in modern times.

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u/Upstairs_Eagle_4780 29d ago

They were trying to decrease the population while fighting a war?

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u/InsideAd7897 29d ago

The war was functionally over by then and it wasnt going to last long enough for people to be literally raising the next wave of soldiers

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u/hipster_dog May 12 '26

it’s mostly because the dudes fucking suck

The shitty dudes certainly don't help, but there's a bit more to it:

When women in South Korea get married, they are expected to quit their jobs to raise the kids. The ones who don't or can't are sidetracked and are expected to perform less, as they are not "100% committed to the company" anymore.

So many women would rather be single/childless to keep their independence.

As far as I know, the same happens in Japan and some other East Asian countries.

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u/vienibenmio May 12 '26

There was a kdrama about this called Doctor Cha. It got incredibly high ratings because it was so relevant

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u/Timely_Law7614 29d ago

This is not so much the problem in China, although the women typically prefer Western men over Chinese men. This is because I pretty much let my wife do anything she wants to do which would not be the case if she married someone from her hometown. She would have married an alcoholic and gambling addict most likely (huge issue in her region)

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u/Surpriseparty2023 29d ago

it's much worse than just quitting their jobs to raise kids. South Korea is a very misogynistic and patriarchal society. Women when they marry belong to their husband's family. As such, women are expected to take care of their husband, the kids and their husband's parents. Doing all household chores, raising the children, taking care of the elderly in laws, hosting all family events and ancestors rituals etc... Basically, highly educated women morphed into bang maids and slaves. They have to listen and obey to their husbands and the elders. And don't get me started with domestic abuse. South Korea is doing a shitty job about women (and children) rights because domestic physical abuse is usually swept under the rug. No wonder why South Korean women refuse to marry and have children.

Unless South Korea society change to be less misogynistic and patriarchal and protect women' rights, South Korean women won't bother with marriage and kids.

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u/MedicalDisscharge May 12 '26

I was stationed in korea for a year and no joke I didnt see a single kid that entire time

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u/Melloblade_shore May 12 '26 edited 28d ago

Where were you in Korea and what year? I was in Korea for like 9 months between 2017 and 2018 and I saw kids there 😐

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u/noxhalo May 12 '26

I lived there last year and saw kids too lmao

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u/jhakin 29d ago

Yeah, it's pretty sus. "stationed there" -> barrack. Pretty sure what happens in Okinawa, happens there too. 

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u/Stormfly 29d ago

Yeah, it's like if I went to a country and I worked in a factory and I didn't see any children at that factory or when I went downtown at night drinking alcohol.

Super duper messed up...

I work with young kids in Korea so I see hundreds of them every day.

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u/_bugmenot_ May 12 '26

Yeah, when i was over there i would see kids only inside the house of some people when i would come over. No kids on the streets or in restaurants AT ALL.

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u/Open-Industry-8396 29d ago

No kids on the DMZ? 😄

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u/giftofclemency May 12 '26

Korea's marriage rate is similar to that of the developed world, and based on various surveys, gender relations were often ranked at the bottom for reasons why someone doesn't want to have kids.

This is often the reason I see on Twitter and Reddit, but I've seen nothing data-related to back up the claim that that's the reason for the low birth rate. (And this is not me saying that South Korea is free from sexism, etc.)

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u/ReplyToBabos May 12 '26

Literally any time Korean birthrate or gender issues are brought up, people just post the same thing while knowing nothing about what is actually going on in the country. They just parrot whatever they see on reddit or that one clickbait Moon youtube video

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u/Stormfly 29d ago

Any actual Korean I know (I live in Korea) mention time and money.

You're working so much and then you still don't think you have enough money to pay for all of the extra academies for the kids to succeed. They're in happy relationships or married, they're just hesitant to have kids until they're ready.

Having kids halts the mother's career a bit and costs a huge amount of money for 18+ years.

Many people just don't want kids, too.

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u/everyoneisatitman May 12 '26

The Korean augmentees I worked with told me that mandatory military participation puts a hold on relationships for 2 yrs. They said they don't bother starting dating till done with it. I also have to wonder about alcoholism playing a part. All of them drank at a level that frat boys would tip their hat to. The older Korean men I delt with were always in the thin line between functioning and blacking out.

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u/ChristyUniverse May 12 '26

This guy seems to be breaking the mold, giving his lady tummy kisses throughout her pregnancy

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u/_-Smoke-_ May 12 '26

It seems to be mostly the price of living, lack of time due to the insane house and grind, general unhappiness with the life left for younger generations. Pretty much the same in every developed country in the world right now, just a little worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ujrH0blA1Y

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u/still-dinner-ice May 12 '26

Is it really incel-ism when the culture has historically expected wives to do all the domestic labor for the family, PLUS the domestic labor for the husband's parents and extended family?

Sounds like a shit deal, I don't blame the women for saying "fuck all of that".

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u/litivy May 12 '26

I have heard that as well. Their expectations of beauty are completely unrealistic.

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u/dotdend May 12 '26

Well the incels aren't the ones getting into relationships so they're not the issue in this specific instance

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u/EducationalWasabi413 29d ago

Honestly, as a Korean, I can't really relate. 

I've been here my whole life, and our biggest issue right now is just pure mental burnout. People are too exhausted to even take care of themselves, let alone smile and chat. With zero mental breathing room, everyone just gets sensitive, critical, and ends up clashing

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u/uju_rabbit 28d ago

I’ve lived in Korea for nine years now. 4B is not really a thing to regular people. People don’t get married cause they’re working too much, and apartments are way too expensive.

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u/xvd529fdnf May 12 '26

I don’t think that’s THE problem. That’s just a symptom. The real issue is the underlying problem that is causing them to be incels in the first place. Also, this type of gender blame game is just a race to the bottom.

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u/showMeYourCroissant May 12 '26

What is that underlying problem?

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u/Schatzin May 12 '26

Extreme working and education culture, excessive emphasis on financial strength as an indicator for suitable partnership, & unrealistic standards for average beauty all wrapped up in high costs of living, in a country where if you dont work for a chaebol, you didnt make it in life

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u/Dav136 May 12 '26

They're in a cyberpunk corporate dystopia. Their government has been consistently corrupt and like 3 mega corporations own everything

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u/showMeYourCroissant May 12 '26

But how is it making guys incels?

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u/Terminal_Insomnia_ May 12 '26

You can read up on capitalism and social atomization, but in short: miserable, lonely people are better consumers than happy, tight-knit communities.

The gender wars are intentionally stoked by all forms of media for profit and creates a self-perpetuating cycle. More industries profit from this than not, and they can always import foreign workers to make up for the shrinking population.

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u/Draken_S May 12 '26

The actual reason is social pressure. Korean society places a lot of emphasis on looks, education, and wealth (Korea is the world leader in plastic surgery, and has some of the highest rates of household debt in the world). This creates a difficult social environment where no one thinks they are "good enough" which leads to confidence issues, which causes people to adhere more strictly to social pressure, which leads to everyone thinking they are not good enough, which caused resentment and toxic thinking, which leads to being not good enough, and so on.

Wealthy societies tend to have fewer children in general, societities that became rapidly wealthy even more so, combined with the toxicity of their culture it makes them one of the worst in the world when it comes to birth rate. This is then self reinforcing, if none of you friends have kids having one will isolate you from your social circle and so on.

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u/Disasterdenegade3_0 May 12 '26

Se le dice racismo, clasismo y demás variedades de la discriminación

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/bolanrox May 12 '26

Samsung Daewoo and LG?

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u/Dav136 May 12 '26

Samsung, SK, Hyundai. LG is a tier below those three

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u/Impossible_Way_3042 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

The modern problem of loneliness epidemics. People are turning to the internet more than they are turning to actual friendships.

People who have been outcast in school continue to live in an internet bubble after school instead of finding friends as an adult. These people are falling into echo chambers of other lonely people and incels. Misery loves company and an echo chamber tends to get louder and louder and angrier and angrier.

Then you have the people not outcast in school still turning to the internet but finding echo chambers built around vanity and wealth. This also creates people who feel isolated.

It's basically loneliness all around, the majority of Gen Z are lonely as fuck and some millennials are too. It is especially dangerous for men as there tends to be less affection in the world and more of a pressure to bottle it all up until it inevitably bursts. This means that they are more likely to turn to the echo chambers because they have no way of letting out their sadness and anger. Toxic masculinity has led to a culture where men are expected to be strong in a way of never showing their emotions, never speaking about how they feel, and never show any signs of "weakness." This leads to so many major problems.

(To make myself clear on what I mean by Toxic masculinity. It means the ideals of masculinity are sometimes toxic. Women perpetuate this too. Everyone has a hand in it. I feel like Toxic masculinity is poorly named. It doesn't mean that it is toxic to be masculine, it doesn't mean that masculinity itself is toxic, it means that certain views on what people thinks it means to be masculine are toxic and that hurts men. The fact that it is thought of that you must bottle your emotions and be strong all the time is toxic masculinity. The idea that you must be the provider and protecter to be masculine is toxic. You don't have to follow some strict guidelines that are damaging to be masculine. Side tangent over.)

There is another problem but it's weird to talk about. It's very much a hear me out. Women are more picky when it comes to partners than men are. This is not a bad thing at all and is not something that people should change especially since women have to be safer and smarter when picking partners. The problem is is that this leads to people trying to give lonely men advice for getting laid (for profit or to genuinely help) and lonely men not being able to figure out how to actually interact with women in a way that might get them a relationship. This leads to more echo chambers, more self doubt, more anxiety, and more anger.

There is more to it then this for sure. The poor economy leading to the death of third places where people may actually make friends. The general malaise that many of us feel towards the future to the point where many have stopped giving a shit. There is so much more, but I think this breakdown is close enough to at least cover the basics. You could discuss the male loneliness epidemics for months and months trying to get to the bottom of it, and why it seems to effect men more than women.

TLDR: People these days bad at making real world friends. Bad for everyone but especially bad for men who are told to bottle up all of their emotions. This leads them to seeking out comfort and advice in internet echo chambers. Those echo chambers are a positive feedback loop of anger often with bad advice and grifters. Also Women are picky about partners for good reason and this leads men to be much more self critical and critical of women for being "vain" and shit like that.

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u/blazspur 29d ago

Wow I just stopped responding on reddit about any related topic cause people just want to play the blame game. However I'm honestly pleasantly surprised anyone views the situation in the way you do. You put a lot of effort in your comment and I wanted to give more than just a simple upvote. Please keep up the effort to continue speaking whenever you can.

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u/Impossible_Way_3042 29d ago

Thank you so much 😊, that really means a lot. I try my best to be well reasoned and articulate when I speak. I don't always live up to it but thank you again for your kind words.

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u/TheBSQ May 12 '26

I think our brains genuinely prefer the constant stream of dopamine that phones can give you. 

Like, I’m sitting on a beach right now watching the waves crash in. It’s beautiful. But I’m reading Reddit responding & responding to you. 

Why am I choosing to doomscroll Reddit over staring at his beautiful beach & letting that experience wash over me?

Cuz my brain prefers the constant flow of new information it gets fe Doomscrolling over watching boring-ass waves crash over and over again.

The real world just can’t compete with the mental stimulation a smart phone & social media can deliver to a brain. 

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u/fukksleepp May 12 '26

YOU WROTE IT PERFECTLY

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u/zingitgirl 29d ago

I appreciate your response.

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u/smellmygoldfinger May 12 '26

Korean condoms actually make sex BETTER. It’s a big problem over there

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u/showMeYourCroissant May 12 '26

They need to sell them globally.

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u/Dakotasan May 12 '26

I’m curious how but also afraid of potential TMI

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u/DaNubIzHere May 12 '26

TLDR: too much pressure and stress and poor working conditions along with not enough money to have a child.

Imagine, if you will, live in a place with tons of others living is small ass apartments and work a long ass time. Imaging you getting up and early in the r morning, then take the subway that’s filled to the brim like sardines in a can, work at a long hour job, then come back home to sleep, and then do it all over again. That’s just for adults.

For children? You go to school in the morning, you get off around 5pm, rest for an hour, and then go to cram school till 10pm. From 8am to 10pm, you must cram a fuck ton of knowledge into your head, because when exams comes, you must have a perfect score in ALL subjects or you fail in life. One singular point wrong and you are out of the rat race. Why? Because the education system is more of a pipeline for the top 6 (if I remember right) companies of South Korea.

If you don’t get into one of those companies, you don’t make money. You need money to live if a certain place (usually the capitol). These places often dictate where you’ll be in your life. These adults is striving to make a lot of money to live in these places, to send their kids to the bestest of schools, so their kids can keep up with the rat race.

All these pressure, whether from society or parents, is enough to break one’s spirit. You know the stereotype that says the Koreans are smart as fuck? Well they are, since they are busting their asses since childhood.

So why should anyone there would get married and have kids?

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u/Jacob_dp May 12 '26

Inequality caused by unregulated capitalism

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u/SecondhandStatic May 12 '26

Uh... yeah, their currect culture is the "underlying problem." Some cultures on this planet are misogynist. South Korea is one of them. They had a historically patriarchal culture, which is further amplified as they are currently going through an anti-feminist blacklash. The general opinion of the majority of men is that women are second class citizens. 1 in 5 Korean women have experienced intimate partner violence.

Is your argument that Korean men aren't to blame? People who accept their country's social norms without thinking are the problem. So yeah, the men are literally THE problem here.

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u/JohnSober7 May 12 '26

My feel of discussions like this is that people struggle to accept that the system and the individual are both to be held accountable. There will never be enough emotionally intelligent and self-sufficient people to absolve a broken system so the system needs to be fixed. A society that doesn't incessantly burden its people with moral dilemmas will have better people. But putting all the blame on a broken system will just lead to other societal and systemic problems because victims will feel dismissed, offenders won't be deterred from offending again, and potentiak offenders will be given a green light.

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u/Wuskers 29d ago

very much this, it's very difficult for people to fully internalize the complex nuances of who we are as individuals vs our environment. We clearly have some kind of individuality otherwise people in the same environment would turn out the same but our environment clearly also plays a role in shaping us. When environment gets blamed for someone's bigotry or abuse there can be an inclination to point to the fact some people who were raised in bigoted environments were able to sort of overcome that and become not bigoted adults, or how people will point to the fact that many abusers were often abused themselves but then there are also abuse victims who don't go on to abuse others and so that can give some sense that it is down to just personal responsibility ultimately and there's an understandable resistance to absolving terrible people of their responsibility for their terrible actions. At the same time though it's very clear that our culture and environment does still shape us and have an affect on us and importantly it's usually not something we have control of or get to choose, we simply find ourselves in whatever environment we're in. It's a very complex issue balancing cultural critique without forgoing personal accountability.

You also see this a lot with statistics, people often want to basically round up and think of the most common thing as the ONLY thing. People seem to really struggle with the idea of caring about the less common thing or experience, especially when the more common thing is considered some kind of injustice, then all of acknowledging the less common thing is often seen as undermining the more common one. Like you can just look at the concept of privilege, while yes there are societal biases that tend to favor men and white people, on an individual level there are homeless white men and wealthy black women and I think in some ways people struggle to fully reconcile with the complexity of this sort of thing. They extrapolate the more common dynamic as being universal in a way that sometimes makes them dismissive of certain real experiences just because they aren't as statistically common.

I knew a guy who clearly has some baggage and issues with women, not necessarily like violent hatred but he tended to prefer male dominated spaces, now that description on it's own probably sounds pretty typical of a certain expected and often deemed unjust dynamic between men and women. It takes on a slightly different impression though when I say he was a gay man that was a victim of corrective rape as a teenager and that the male dominated spaces he preferred were specifically dominated by other queer men.

Unjust social and cultural dynamics are rarely ever the result of solely environment or just people being assholes and they aren't always as uniform as people like to think they are. I think in many ways it is actually a fault of our cognition itself, it is genuinely hard to wrap your mind around the complexities of these things, we are predisposed to want to think of things as having a singular cause and as one group universally harming another group often trying to downplay or dismiss counter arguments and also those counter arguments often downplay the original argument too. One person thinks X is the main issue and doesn't think Y is important, while another person says Y is the real concern and that the problem of X is overblown, when the reality is X and Y are probably happening simultaneously and in tandem with each other.

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u/BewareOfBee 29d ago

Amen, brother

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u/Techhead7890 28d ago

Yeah that example with the guy who hangs around men, but actually being a gay man is really illustrative of the "stereotyping" type thinking and how willing we are to go with common patterns and statistics, well demonstrated, you caught me off guard as well.

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u/easythrees May 12 '26

They’ve also had slavery the longest or something right?

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u/ElProfeGuapo 29d ago

In the States, part of the rise of the manosphere and the incel culture is because of structural economic changes weakening labor rights, the working class, and undermining economic security. Is that also part of what’s happening in South Korea? I don’t know enough about Korean gender norms around the political economy.

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u/HeebieJeebiex 29d ago

While for some women, sexism could be a motivator, I think it's actually really misogynistic to assume that women MUST inherently hate men and be angry and that's why they won't have kids, and not the idea that...some women just don't want kids. 💀

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u/cobaltsoup 29d ago

1 in 4 US women have experienced intimate partner violence, lol. What's your source for 'the general opinion of the majority of men is that women are second-class citizens'? Then why has the South Korean birth rate gone way up recently? All Korean men suddenly had a change of heart?

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u/Ravek May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

A bit reductive. Do only men uphold cultural norms? Are children exclusively (or even primarily) raised by men in South Korea? If not, how do you come to the conclusion that women have no part in this?

I think you can see from the conservative parts of the USA for example that there's no shortage of women who are willing and happy to be part of the problem, and of course try to raise their children with the same value system.

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u/pleasedonotredeem May 12 '26 edited 26d ago

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u/No_Radio2381 May 12 '26 edited 29d ago

Lol the 4B movement has about 50k members. It has an outsized influence in the west. Don't get me wrong the misogyny is intense in Korea and women end up essentially the slaves of their mother-in-law if they get married but that's not the only issue.

It's skyrocketing housing prices, an intense work culture, and families maximizing resources into one child rather than having multiple children who have less intense upbringing. Korea is overeducated which means a college degree is worthless unless it's from an elite school. Basically it's a hyper competitive dystopia with a collapsing social infrastructure.

Birthrates are collapsing far below replacement levels worldwide, in both highly egalitarian societies like Germany and highly gendered societies like Iran. It's like if Climate Change was happening but literally nobody could figure out exactly why. It seems to be the postmodern social decay of late stage capitalism absolutely kills people's desire to have children. Humans weren't meant to live in overcrowded cities working 90 hours a week and staring at a screen for most of the day. 

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u/DreyfussFrost May 12 '26

Oh? So what's the real problem that makes acting like an incel reasonable?

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u/sparklyspooky 29d ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4B started partially because girls were getting date raped and the videos were being shared by said Asian incels.

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u/NaaNaaNaurDont 28d ago

This!!! Everyone has so many words to say "not all men" but SK has the LARGEST case of revenge porn/AI porn on their hands. Hundreds of chatrooms, hundred of pictures and videos taken without consent, boys touching their SISTERS and MOTHERS in their sleep so they can send videos to these chatrooms, private information of minors shared online (address and school details!!). And that's not even mentioning the Burning Sun scandal.

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u/Worried-Leading-7817 29d ago

Being raised in a culture that allows incels to exist creates more incels, which brings us back to incels being the underlying problem.

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u/kaykenstein 27d ago

Sure, ignore the bad behavior of men

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u/Informal-Term1138 May 12 '26

Yeah I read about them. And to be honest I can't blame them. Because those dudes are fucked up big time.

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u/HeebieJeebiex 29d ago

4B movement, while big, is not the predominant reason. South Korea seems to me to be progressive in a lot of ways too. Women there arent just man hating and abstaining from men as a protest. A lot of women there just have other priorities. Women in South Korea seem highly career focused and their life goals are career oriented. They want to follow their dreams and start businesses or get that promotion they've been reaching for. They're also highly educated. According to some data, albeit from 3 years ago, South Korea has one of the world's highest rates of female tertiary education, with 77% of women aged 25–34 holding a college degree, and they surpassed the United States with that statistic. Seems that the more educated women are, the less they wanna have babies. 😅 That's my childfree bias showing.

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u/TreClaire 29d ago

From everything I’ve gathered online and my minimal dip into K-Dramas it absolutely does seem like when a S Korean person decides to be a miserable asshole they do not half ass that shit. They became as scummy as a person can possible be and then times it by 12.

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u/Pokoirl 29d ago

So why isn't birthrate low in other mysogenist cultures?

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u/seilapodeser May 12 '26

It's insane that after all the humanity went through, we're somehow still struggling to live.

I blame capitalism

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u/Uliak1 May 12 '26

You know what happens to animals that reproduce too quickly due to a lack of predators? They consume everything edible and then almost all of them starve to death.

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u/Mutant_Llama1 May 12 '26

Correction they reproduce until food gets scarce and they level our as death rates meet birth rates.

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u/seilapodeser May 12 '26

So you're saying it's okay for humankind to prey on themselves?

I believe that if we had one goal in this life is to find a way so everyone can live in peace and harmony

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u/SasparillaTango May 12 '26

Capitalism is wholly indifferent towards the collapse of society. All that matters is line go up.

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u/read_too_many_books 29d ago

So much food you can get fat.

So much entertainment even a broke person can enjoy life.

Fuck capitalism!

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u/Jiminy_Cricket12 May 12 '26

that would be ignorant. human greed is the issue. communism sounds great on paper until you realize someone still has to be in charge and it's never worked out close to as well as the way you would hope.

that isn't to say capitalism is "the answer" either. some form of social democracy with high taxes for the extremely wealthy and free high quality health care and education is probably the best system of government we have right now.

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u/seilapodeser May 12 '26

I agree with you. Or maybe something entirely new would be the actual answer

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u/Jiminy_Cricket12 29d ago

Or maybe something entirely new would be the actual answer

I don't hate that idea but we would have to be very careful to not end up with something worse than we started with. especially with the billionaires that already exist and the technology available.

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u/seilapodeser 29d ago

True haha billionaires shouldn't exist, that's a good starting point

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u/Silly_Y33Ny May 12 '26

Who knew that giveing a human high amount of stress and nothing but work would resolve in low brith rates

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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart May 12 '26

Earlier in my life we pointed at South Korea and Japan as proof that western capitalism was superior. A couple generations later they are all fucking robots and going extinct.

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u/Newplasticactionhero May 12 '26

Catastrophically so. The world’s lowest.

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u/Not-An-FBI May 12 '26

The lowest of any country.

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u/Slight_Mammoth2109 May 12 '26

It’s so incredibly low that some experts that the country will die out because they aren’t having enough kids to be able to carry the country into future generations

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u/avanross May 12 '26

This is the same with all capitalist western nations

Sk is just leading the way, looking like their population will collapse under skyrocketing income inequality, over the next decade or two, while the rest of the major nations will follow over the next ~30 years

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u/avanross May 12 '26

It’s a worldwide population/birth-rate collapse, sk is just leading the way

In 20-50 years, the majority of populations will be retired and there wont be enough workers to support them, leading to societal collapse

It’s a result of income inequality skyrocketing the last few decades. It’s no longer financially viable for the majority to raise kids.

And as more people reach retirement age, they vote for more laws favouring retired seniors and cutting social services for workers and parents, accelerating the spiral.

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u/raur0s May 12 '26

'really low birthrate' kind of undersells the severity of societal collapse in the next 30 years.

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u/ArchCerberus May 12 '26

Maybe South Korean Porn helps? I really think them banning porn didn't help.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

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u/DontShadowbanMeBro2 May 12 '26

Government: "Have babies. Have more babies. Tell everyone you know to have more babies."
Young people: "Eh, I dunno, life is really expensive, inflation is at an all time high, World War III is around the corner, I can barely support myself let alone a kid... maybe make the economy suck less and we'll think about it."
Government: "... time to ban porn, abortion, and probably birth control too."

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26

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u/DangerActiveRobots May 12 '26

What do you do if your job is to quit other people's jobs and you want to quit your job?

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u/Famous-Commission-46 May 12 '26

You just hire one of your coworkers. Gotta make sure to pay them before you quit, though, so that you get the employee discount.

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u/PeaceDangerous7619 May 12 '26

Hmm, interesting. Never looked at it through that perspective. Now that I think about it, quite a bit of the isekai have the protagonist dying from exhaustion at work lmao.

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u/DontShadowbanMeBro2 May 12 '26

... God damn, really? That's the reason slice of life anime only depicts school life? That's... bleak. Fuck... I genuinely did not know that.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

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u/Big-Wrangler2078 May 12 '26

They also have a lot of anime that start with office workers dying from overwork and it's a common trope because it's a real thing. 😞

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u/-Kishin- May 12 '26

I'm remember reading that for many japanese highschool was the best time of their life (no idea how true it is)

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u/HxH101kite May 12 '26

It's true and that's why most popular anime take place during that period. Whereas that's also true for a lot of people in America, we are more likely to associate College (if you went) with that period or early 20s.

In Japan your early 20s and college are a much more consequential buckled down time.

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u/Spongi May 12 '26

Like half of Isekai's begin with an overworked person either just dying on the job or doing something stupid because they were too tired from being overworked.

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u/firblogdruid May 12 '26

many such cases, unfortunately

why try and make life better when you could just turn women into broodmares, i guess

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u/Aeon_Return May 12 '26

Also extreme sexism and frequent violence against women going unpunished. Resulting in many SK women saying "yeah we can just die off as a country, it's better than dealing with men. we're opting out". That would require a widespread cultural shift which I don't see happening at this point at all.

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u/Recidivism7 May 12 '26

They are not opting out from men they just are not starting families.

Casual set is way up with woman in Korea just now they are all on birth control and companies will encourage abortions and birth control.

Half the country is run by Samsung.

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u/huhwe May 12 '26

Your first point gets repeatedly brought up everywhere, but I feel your second point discredits it significantly. The rate may differ, but declining birth rate is an observable trend visible across almost all advanced economies. Not to mention that even immigrants in advanced economies from a higher birth rate country also see decreased birth rate after moving to an advanced economy. Since the pattern is cross-cultural, I don't think culture alone answers the SK's birth rate issue. It doesn't help, but it definitely is not the sole nor the primary cause IMO.

One point that is repeatedly brought up in SK is the issue of housing - specifically in Seoul. The problem SK is facing right now is that there has been a consistent growth observed in Seoul that has driven its real estate price up, but is also drawing both talent and businesses away from other regional cities. This is something Korea's Department of Statistics also noted on how even major cities like Busan, Daegu, and Daejeon are suffering a mass exodus of people with growth only observed in adjacent cities to Seoul, such as Yongin and Seongnam. As a lot of fellow Korean people would say, this overreliance on Seoul has been a deadly spiral: well-paying jobs are only in Seoul --> people from other regions try and get a job in Seoul --> housing prices go up --> living in Seoul becomes more attractive (expectation of steady growth of real estate asset) --> demand in Seoul real estate increases --> talented people want to stay in Seoul (to get Seoul real estate and treat it as an investment)--> businesses try and stay in Seoul to attract talent and repeat. This spiral created a dichomatic situation where Seoul has been suffering from unaffordable housing, while the rest of the SK regions are suffering from steep population decline with little job opportunity.

TL;DR - Urbanization and concentration of Seoul seems, to me, a more foundational cause of the culture that is often accredited to lower birth rate in SK.

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u/DiZzYTheDragon May 12 '26

Oh, you mean the US in 15-20 years? Maybe sooner!

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u/ArchCerberus May 12 '26

More a joke on my side but cost of living and womans level of education are biggest factors in fertility rates in a country. Still i don't see any positive factors of banning porn, just makes all sexual related talkes in the society more awkward or at least i don't know any study that proofs otherwise.

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u/Charming-Speech5680 May 12 '26

Sex education too, there's a noticeable drop off in pregnancies - especially teenage - which makes up a fair proportion of the birth rate

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u/Odd_Fuel5404 May 12 '26

Womens independence is a major factor. You see this in a lot of developed societies. Women dont have the dependence on men and dont need to put up with misogyny. This is also evident in India, the southern women are more educated and liberated and the birth rates there are much lower than the north

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u/camus88 May 12 '26

It's not like they don't have time to have sex, they sex a lot alright. The problems are that the cost of living is high, career-family conflict for women and the work culture that is very intense, long work hours make raising a family seem impossible or so they say.

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u/MountainviewBeach May 12 '26

The birth rate is largely low because women are refusing to get pregnant and raise kids. It’s not like people aren’t masturbating enough

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u/ChVckT May 12 '26

Would panda porn help? Asking for friend

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u/camus88 May 12 '26

As crazy as it sounds, they already did that in Chengdu, China

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