FROM NBC NEWS: Less than a week before he was killed, Charlie Kirk was in Asia spreading his conservative and anti-immigration message, making stops in South Korea and Japan, where he urged people to have more children and embrace religion.
There is a receptive audience for messages such as Kirk’s in South Korea and Japan, both East Asian democracies and U.S. allies with highly monoethnic populations, falling birth rates and growing far-right movements.
Anti-feminist backlash in South Korea, which ranks 101st out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap Report, was said to play a role in the 2022 presidential election victory of Yoon Suk Yeol. As Yoon faced impeachment over his December 2024 declaration of martial law, supporters who embraced his claims of election fraud and legal persecution adopted symbols and slogans associated with President Donald Trump.
In Japan, government efforts to bring in more foreign labor in the face of an aging population have met with resistance, and last month there was public panic when misinformation about a new cultural exchange program suggested it would lead to a flood of immigrants from four countries in Africa.
In an interview with South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, Kirk was quoted as saying, “The phenomenon of young people, especially men, turning conservative is occurring simultaneously across multiple continents.”
Kirk encouraged South Korea’s 50 million people to keep itself safe from the “menace” of the Chinese Communist Party. He also noted that the country’s birth rate is the world’s lowest, saying it is up to South Koreans to keep their country from “disappearing.”
“It’s not just morally wrong to not have children,” said Kirk. “If you look at it in historical terms, it’s pathetic.”
After returning from his trip, Kirk said that South Korea “is totally under attack.”
“The same things that we have been fighting for here, whether it be lawfare in South Korea or mass migration in Japan — this is a worldwide phenomenon,” he said. “It is not unique to the U.S., which is why it deserves more attention. That is why I chose South Korea as my first Asian destination.”
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