South Korea is a country where the patriarchal culture in its most conservative aspects is very rooted: women are generally expected to have children, dedicate themselves to the family and adapt to a series of aesthetic and dress standards. Among the feminist movements born in recent years to oppose all of this there is a rather radical one, which completely rejects marriage with men and in an even wider sense heterosexual relationships, in the belief that this is the only way to try to limit abuse and gender discrimination.
The movement is called “4B”, it has a few thousand militants and for a few days it has started to be talked about also abroad thanks to an in-depth item by American journalist Anna Louie Sussman on The Cuttranslated into Italian and recently published are International.
The 4B movement (also known as the “4 no” movement) takes its name from four South Korean words that begin with the prefix “bi” for “no”: beanthat is, the rejection of heterosexual marriage; bichulsanthe refusal to have children; biyeonaerefusal to have romantic relationships with men and bisexual, the refusal to have sex with them. As the article explains The Cut, this movement is both “an ideological position and a lifestyle”: often the women who join it shave their hair, refuse to wear make-up and wear baggy trousers, sweatshirts or hats to protest against the aesthetic canons imposed by patriarchal traditions. More generally they choose to remain single and are dedicated to reclaiming and promoting an alternative lifestyle through meetings, demonstrations and online activism.
The common element among the militants is that of excluding men from their lives as much as possible, sometimes even refusing to have male friends.
In many cases, the women of the movement report having suffered abuse or violence from their fathers or partners, as she also explains another article on the theme published in March onAtlantic. A survey commissioned in 2016 by the South Korean Ministry of Equal Opportunities says that it is a situation common to many: 41.5 percent of women interviewed for the survey, cited by The Cuthad said that he had suffered some kind of violence from his partner: a much higher figure than the global average which is already very high, around 30 percent.
Added to this are strong social discriminations. International Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says South Korea has by far the gender wage gap wider among the 38 member countries. South Korean women do much of the unpaid housework, and if they marry or have children, they are expected to leave school or work to look after the family. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for men guilty of feminicide, “revenge porn” and other sex crimes to go unpunished, contrary to what happens in rare cases in which women do it.
The 4B movement is based on the idea that South Korean society perpetuates a grossly unequal system, in which women continue to be exposed to the risk of abuse and various forms of violence. In this sense, according to the women who adhere to it, excluding relationships with men would serve to reduce the possibility of these episodes occurring.
Helena Lee, a 24-year-old woman who is studying to become a civil servant and joins the movement, told theAtlantic that she tries “to trust the boys”, but in the end she is more inclined to an approach that she defines as “extreme”. Yeowon, 26, an office worker, says marriage poses an existential threat to women in South Korea. Minji, 27, agrees and says the main reason she doesn’t want to get married is widespread domestic violence.
At the moment it is not clear how many women the 4B movement is made up of in South Korea, a country of about 52 million inhabitants: according to some sources, it gathers at least 4mila and according to others 50mila. However, even many women who are not part of the group say they have a hard time thinking about the possibility of marry a South Korean managain because of the role married women are expected to play, she says The Cut.
– Read also: The problem of hidden cameras in South Korean toilets
The 4B group has developed roughly in the last five years, following other less extreme movements that more generally oppose the expectations of a country obsessed with cosmetic surgery, with a competitive spirit and well-being that arrived with the economic boom of recent decades. One of these is the so-called movement to “remove the corset”, which engages in activism to convince women not to accept the standards of beauty promoted by society and to claim the validity of a different aesthetic appearance. Other movements were born from some online forums and women’s groups that around 2015 began to take a stand against the anti-feminist movements active in the country, supported in the electoral campaign by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.
About ten years ago, the idea began to spread among many South Korean men that women wanted to obtain more rights and privileges than they did, that for example they are obliged to do military service, unlike women. It was then that various anti-feminist groups grew up, such as Ilbe, misogynistic and far-right, who among other things describe women as opportunistic and manipulative. As noted by Euisol Jeong, who covered the topic in her doctorate, anti-feminists in forums and on social media began to criticize women students; they also coined the offensive term kimchinyeo(i.e. “women of kimchi”, one of the traditional dishes of South Korea), to stereotypically indicate women who, according to them, would be selfish, superficial and would exploit their partners.
In response, some feminists began to imitate the communication techniques of antifeminist men and make fun of them, in turn using derogatory language to give visibility to the widespread misogyny in the country. One of the best known feminist sites was Megaliawho among other things invented the term hannamchung, with which men were compared to insects in an equally stereotypical way. Between 2017 and 2018, the launch of the #MeToo movement helped to further spread feminist issues also in South Korea, where these issues were mostly limited to universities and some associations.
Another of the central issues for the 4B movement is motherhood.
In the 1960s, every woman in South Korea had an average of six children: things changed a lot with the migration from villages to cities and the rapid transformation of South Korean society, which in recent decades has led more and more women to want to study and work. The result is that today South Korea is the country with the lowest birth rate in the world, 0.78 children for each woman, and in the capital Seoul the figure is even lower. For some time the South Korean government has been trying to convince women to have more children, with various strategies: in 2016, when it spread a birth map with the data expected for each region of the country, there were numerous protests and protests from women who said they felt treated like “farm animals”.
– Read also: Antifeminist groups are strong in South Korea
One of the main purposes for the women of the 4B movement is to support themselves, in order to live an autonomous life and as independent as possible from men. Some groups organize events with finance experts to teach women how to save and invest their savings; there is also an online community where, among other things, job advertisements are shared and the banks that apply the best interest rates on loans are indicated. Han, a math teacher in Daegu, one of the most conservative cities in the country, explained that if women were able to have more influence economically, then they could also become important political subjects.
Like any movement, 4B also seems to have some internal divisions, or at least issues that could threaten its long-term viability. For example, observe The Cut, it is not clear whether according to her criteria it is permissible to be friends with men, or with women who still want to date them. Furthermore, some activists who adhere to the movement contest the fact that trans people, i.e. those who have made a gender transition, are taken into little consideration. Various activists interviewed by The Cut however, they believe that these aspects are purely theoretical and that they have no real impact on the choice to live without men.