I'm noticing a trend amongst these fictional tales from Korea and China where the girl has no power and males are preferred, and thus the stories have men who are monsters, doing horrendous things to female characters, with the perhaps exception of the female protagonist, who just somehow manages to escape all manner of horror to escape the vile evil nature of their ways. The male princes are protected by the willing sacrifices of the lesser female characters, and it makes me wonder if this is a kind of unconscious social critique by writers upon the nature of their cultures either in the past or present? I mean, take how these stories so often use 18th and 19th century European models for their fantasy stories. Protagonists get ruled/lorded over by possessive, controlling males whose only consolation appears to be their "hotness".
Makes me wonder if this is a subconscious form of social commentary that might not even be fully conscious by the writer---much like how Tolkien was so vastly influenced by WWI whether he admitted it or not in his writings.