What does 이대남 (idaenam) mean? How twentysomething men became a Korean voting bloc

Our editor's cousin is 25. Every election season, he says, the news talks about him: “What will 이대남 choose?” He himself spent over ten minutes deciding in the voting booth. “I'm just a 25-year-old guy, but on the news they've already decided who I'm voting for.”

You can see how common the word is in the numbers. When the Korea Press Foundation asked 1,000 adults in March 2022, 64.7% had heard it, and 73.4% of those first came across it in the news. Here's where a word that resurfaces every election came from, and why it's contested.

On its face it's a neutral abbreviation. In practice it often comes with baggage — “conservative,” “hostile to feminism.” So the same word can be an analytical term or a stereotype depending on who's using it. During the 2022 presidential race, Esquire Korea noted, a scornful offshoot, 이찍남, even appeared. 이대남 isn't the only label that sorts voters by age and gender: 영포티 (“young forty”) targets people in their 40s, and 개딸 names one politician's supporters.

• 이번 선거도 결국 이대남 표심이 변수라는 분석이 나온다Analysts say the 이대남 vote is the wild card in this election too.A common line in pre-election news analysis
• 출구조사 보니까 이대남, 이대녀 표가 또 정반대로 갈렸네Looking at the exit poll, the 이대남 and 이대녀 votes split in opposite directions again.Family group chat during the vote count
• 나 이대남인데, 그 기사에 나온 이대남이랑은 생각이 좀 달라I'm an 이대남, but I don't think like the 이대남 in that article.A twentysomething who doesn't fit the image
• 여야 할 것 없이 이대남 공약 내놓느라 바쁘다Ruling and opposition parties alike are busy rolling out pledges for 이대남.The politics page in election season
• 이대남이라는 말로 묶기엔 우리 과 남자 동기들 성향이 다 달라The guys in my department are way too different to lump together as 이대남.A university current-affairs debate club

According to a commentary in Pressian by Yoo Hyun-mi, a researcher at Changwon National University, the label 이대남 emerged in the late 2010s. The trigger was presidential approval polling in winter 2018: a drop in support among men in their twenties drew the attention of politicians and the press, and the same commentary says conservative media highlighted it to criticize the government of the day. In February 2019, the presidential Policy Planning Committee published a report analyzing why support among men in their twenties had fallen — the government and ruling party had started studying the group too.

The word took off after the April 2021 Seoul mayoral by-election. The three broadcasters' exit poll found 72.5% of men in their twenties voted for Oh Se-hoon of the People Power Party, versus 40.9% of women in their twenties (Kyunghyang Shinmun). A gender gap that wide made “the 이대남 phenomenon” a fixture of political coverage. Esquire Korea noted that when Lee Jun-seok was elected People Power Party leader the same year, many commentators credited support from young men.

One: exit polls keep showing a gender gap. In the three broadcasters' exit poll for the 2022 presidential election, men 29 and under went 58.7% for Yoon Suk Yeol and 36.3% for Lee Jae-myung, while women 29 and under went 58.0% for Lee and 33.8% for Yoon (Seoul Shinmun). For the 2025 presidential election, Maeil Shinmun reported that 24% of men 29 and under said they voted for Lee, down 12.3 points from 2022, versus 58.1% of women 29 and under. With a clear gap every time, the word gets called back every time.

Two: politicians address the group directly. Young men at a 2021 Kyunghyang Shinmun roundtable criticized some politicians for styling themselves “spokespeople for men in their twenties.” Other parties, in turn, roll out pledges and campaigns aimed at young men every election. Either way, having a name like 이대남 makes it easier to address them.

Three: the interpretations clash. The same numbers get different diagnoses. At the 2021 Kyunghyang roundtable, young men said they hadn't turned conservative but had developed “a blind faith in fairness,” and that “distrust and resentment of the current government” moved their generation. A Pressian commentary argued that anti-feminism can't be left out of any analysis of 이대남. Esquire Korea argued young men hadn't turned conservative so much as turned away from the Democratic and progressive parties because they felt no political efficacy there. The more the readings diverge, the more the word gets quoted — and accusing the other side's reading of 내로남불 (double standards) is a familiar move.

From March 10–14, 2022, the Korea Press Foundation's Media Research Center asked 1,000 adults aged 20 to 59 nationwide what they thought of the word 이대남 (margin of error ±3.0 points at 95% confidence). As reported by the Journalists Association of Korea, people saw it less as an analytical term and more as the language of conflict.

The last line is the interesting one. Most respondents called the word a frame, yet 59.6% also agreed it describes a real phenomenon. Read together: the phenomenon exists, but the way it's named makes people uncomfortable. In the same survey, 71.1% viewed everyday use of the word negatively and 13.1% positively. Election coverage keeps using it anyway. When the June 3, 2026 local-election exit poll showed 75.3% of Seoul men aged 18–29 backing Oh Se-hoon, while 48.5% of women the same age backed Jung Won-oh (Financial News/Yonhap), TV news put 이대남 back in the headlines.

The most common objection is that men in their twenties are all different. Esquire Korea argued the 이대남 image hides differences of class and region: the situation of young men outside the capital area, where stable jobs are hard to find, doesn't fit in one word. The same piece warned that mocking young men or calling for them to be “taught a lesson” only makes communication worse. And whether an exit poll says 70% or 58%, it also tells you there's another 30–40% of young men. The ten minutes our editor's cousin spent in the booth are somewhere in those numbers.

So: 이대남 is an abbreviation for an age and a gender that elections turned into the name of a political group. The numbers are real, but they don't speak for every young man. Our editor's cousin says he changes the channel now when 이대남 comes up on the news. He'd rather decide his own vote. If you have a sharper definition, add it to the 이대남 entry in the dictionary.