The Four No’s
South Korea currently holds the lowest birth rate in the world.
At 0.78, the amount of children per woman is vastly below the replacement threshold of 2.1 and the global average of 2.3. As a result, the South Korean population is declining. If the trend continues, the Korean population will halve by 2100.
The Korean government has taken drastic steps towards combating this issue. Hospital bills and IVF treatments are covered by the government for married couples and after having a child, families are provided financial benefits such as subsidized housing and free taxi rides. Men may now even be exempt from the compulsory military service if they father three children before the age of 30.
Try as they might, though, none of these solutions will work. What the government is failing to address is that at the core of Korea’s population problem is not a financial issue, but a gender one.
In 2019, YouTubers Jung Se-young and Baeck Ha-na popularized what is known as the ‘4B movement.’ The 4 ‘B’s’ are as follows: bihon (no marriage), bisekseu (no sex with men), bichulsan (no child-rearing), and beonae (no dating men). This new feminist movement seeks not to fight the patriarchy, but to remove themselves from it completely. Korean women are reacting to pervasive sexism among young Korean men by withholding the actions they have been reduced to. Thousands of women have become adherents to the movement and actively practice its tennents. But 4B did not happen in a vacuum.
The movement has been a response to rampant and sometimes violent misogyny. The amount of women who have experienced violent or sex based crimes has increased dramatically in recent years. Women have taken to online spaces to find safety and affirmation by sharing experiences, methods for protecting oneself, and a fear or even hatred of men.
This movement, however, has sparked a vocal countermovement of men’s rights activists. Men are shifting the blame back to women by arguing that feminism is causing higher male death rates. Seoul city councilor Kim Ki-duk claimed that Korea’s “change into a female-dominant society” is responsible for many male suicides. According to one survey in 2021, 79% of Korean men in their 20s believe that they are victims of ‘reverse discrimination.’ These sentiments have given rise to and been spurred on by internet activism.
Bae In-gyu, the leader of a men’s rights group known as “New Men on Solidarity” has described feminism as a ‘mental illness.’ Men in these movements have a vitriol for women, going so far as to call them ‘kimchi-bitches.’ Men’s rights sympathies have even reached the highest level of government—the current president Yoon Suk Yeol has pledged to abolish the ministry of gender-equality, citing feminism as “hurting healthy relationships between men and women.”
Korea’s sexism problem is evidence of a larger, global, gender divide. In the US, Korea and other parts of the world, the gap between the beliefs of young men and women is growing rapidly. As young women become more liberal/progressive, many young men become increasingly conservative, according to recent polling. Many men and women are feeling growing resentment or even hatred for each other as this polarization continues. While they are certainly not equivalent, both of these groups lack empathy for the other side of the conversation. Both men and women are victims of the patriarchy (to varying degrees) and a successful movement for feminism must address that.
When we generalize about another group, especially one based on biology, we come dangerously close to essentialism (the belief that a group is inherently and unchangeably a certain way). When men reduce women to sexual objects, they view them with an entitlement that leads to violently taking what they believe is theirs. When women characterize all men as uncontrollably, inherently dangerous, we come frighteningly close to perpetuating the core beliefs of the patriarchy itself.
The pressure on men by male dominated society to suppress their emotions is what truly leads to male suicide, not women. And it is not that men are biologically programmed to be violent, but that they have been raised and conditioned in a way that leads them to believe they are entitled to be. This is not to skirt responsibility or to make excuses for men who commit crimes against women, but, rather, to explain how we have arrived at our current problem. The safety and lives of women must take priority over men’s feelings, but we should not ignore them either. The only way to make meaningful lasting change in our society and save our population is to build a world based on empathy, compassion and equality, not hatred, violence, or revenge. To love is radical, to hate is not.