Male youth's self-narrative and the discourse of meritocracy in South Korea

In South Korea, which has seen a drastic power transfer from a progressive to an authoritarian government, a new form of the 'weak-victim' narrative has emerged in recent years, and changes and ruptures in the discourse on the weak have occurred. Young men in South Korea claim that they have been excluded from institutions, policies and systems and denied equal opportunities compared to women. It is brought to the fore the discourse of fairness.This article notes that a sense of faith in meritocracy is one of the contributors that generated the discourse of fairness. It examines how seemingly progressive policies conflicted with and were left stranded by the logic of fairness and meritocracy and takes a close look at why this happened. In addition, it reconstructs the social conditions that brought up the issue of fairness, investigating how the discourse of fairness emerged and how the significance of 'fairness' was shifted and re-conceptualized. Meanwhile, as the idea of meritocracy has become prevalent in society, a critical analysis of it was also conducted from multilateral angles. This article analyzes various aspects of the criticisms of meritocracy, discussing how we should view these criticisms and we can find possibilities to overcome the problematics of meritocracy.