Ashton Hwang
I am Ashton Hwang, a Korean American student currently attending Korea International School. I am deeply interested in the categories of social policy, demographic change, and identity formation in today’s rapidly changing societies. Growing up between different cultures has helped me find my curiosity regarding how institutions—such as family structures, labor markets, and welfare systems—quietly influence individual experiences of belonging and isolation. Intrigued by these differences, I created a website to encourage intergenerational dialogue among male populations to bring different cultural and societal perspectives about identity, belonging, and masculinity.
My research focuses on what I define as the “male loneliness epidemic” in South Korea, particularly among middle-aged and older men. Rather than approaching loneliness as an individual issue, I consider it a structural occurrence ingrained in legal reforms and labor market transformations. I am especially interested in how the decline of the traditional idea that men should be the main financial providers has changed men’s social connections and how they see themselves.
Through analyzing longitudinal data and qualitative research, I seek to understand how institutional change can create unintended social consequences, particularly among different genders. Overall, I hope to have conversations about aging, mental health, and gender-responsive policy in societies experiencing rapid economic and social restructuring.
Independent Scholar
Session
This paper examines the structural origins of the emerging “male loneliness epidemic” in South Korea, focusing on middle-aged and older men. While loneliness is widely recognized as a public health concern, South Korea presents a striking gendered paradox: men report loneliness less frequently than women, yet when they do, they experience disproportionately severe mental health consequences, including heightened risks of depression and suicide. The paper addresses this gender gap, increasingly recognized as the “Korea Puzzle”.
Rather than treating male loneliness as an individual psychological deficit, the paper advances a structural explanation. Drawing on longitudinal surveys, demographic data on one-person households, and qualitative studies on gendered experiences of loneliness, it identifies a critical inflection point in the early 2000s. Two mechanisms are central. First, legal and welfare individualization shifted Korea from a family-centered to an individual-centered institutional framework. Second, post-IMF labor flexibilization and economic insecurity destabilized the male breadwinner model. Together, these transformations weakened the structural foundations through which men had historically derived identity, authority, and social belonging.
The paper argues that men’s social networks - often spouse- and workplace-centered - became asymmetrically fragile under these reforms. As living alone became normalized, women demonstrated adaptive resilience, while men exhibited persistent and escalating loneliness, particularly in cases of widowhood. The analysis also highlights a delicate relationship between gender equality reforms and male loneliness: advances in individual rights and female economic autonomy undermined traditional men’s sense of identity and belonging before sufficient alternative sources of connection could develop. By situating loneliness within institutional transformation, this paper reconceptualizes male loneliness as a byproduct of structural reordering, with implications for aging, welfare design, and gender-responsive social policy.