Charlie Kirk was spreading his conservative message in Asia days before he was killed

Just days 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.

HONG KONG — 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.

“Their country is totally under attack,” he said of South Korea on his podcast this week after returning from his trip. “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.”

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.