What is the meaning of South Korea’s 4B movement?

If you are a straight woman or have single female friends, you’re likely familiar with the state of dating. It’s almost impossible to find the perfect person to match your freak, especially while juggling a full-time job, kids, a home, and the pressure of keeping up appearances. The frustration of finding a man who is worth the time is a mounting pressure worldwide, but a rapidly growing number of women have found the solution.

What started with a small band of South Korean women on Twitter (now X) in 2019, is quickly gaining traction around the globe. After the 2024 election, American women are more than ready to join the 4B Movement and are using TikTok to bring the call to action to an international scale.

What does 4B stand for?

Four tenets make up the 4B movement:

• Bihon: no heterosexual marriage.

• Bisekseu: no child birth.

• Biyeonae: no dating men.

• Bisekseu: no heterosexual relationships.

But as the movement has picked up steam across the globe, it has spurred much more rigorous offshoots. When it hit China, it morphed into “6B4T.” While it included the original tenants, it added a provision to exclude sexist products. This spans from rejecting Idol culture or hypersexualized depictions of women to rejecting items that come with a “pink tax.” The “tax” is the extra cost associated with would-be generic items that are geared toward women. Functionally the same as those made for men but cost prohibitive due to the coloration or branding.

Where did 4B come from?

The movement is built around the above-mentioned tenets, which author Cho Nam-Joo laid out in her 2016 debut novel, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. The novel follows millennial everywoman Kim Jiyoung as she falls deeper into “psychic deterioration in the face of rampant misogyny.” The novel helped to shed light on South Korea’s rampant sexism, inequality, and misogyny – but it’s a message that strikes a chord with women worldwide.

As of April 2024, the movement was still very small in its country of origin, but it picked up ample speed. Unlike traditional feminism, it doesn’t look to fight patriarchy, rather, it intends to move away from it entirely. It comes on the tail of the 2017 Escape the Corset movement that encouraged women to wear less makeup, stop wearing “sexy” clothes, and cut their hair short. South Korea is a relatively conservative country, and the less-feminine appearance can cause controversy.

One activist shared her experience, saying that in S. Korean society, women’s role is to “be silent.”

“Misogyny is still very common in this society, in the culture and in the system. It’s not shocking to hear things like: ‘How dare a woman talk back to a man?’. Systematically as well, Korea is the country with the biggest wage gap among OECD countries.”

Even as women are pushed to the proverbial back of the line, society foists some of the strictest beauty standards in the world on them. It’s not uncommon to gift children plastic surgery, “More than half of all the girls in my class in high school got plastic surgery as a graduation gift,” the activist admitted.    

South Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world, with 1 in 3 women going under the knife.

The lengthy task of applying makeup starts as young as 10 for some girls, who spend thousands of dollars and hours of their lives trying to fit the societal expectation of what a woman should be. It’s seen as a form of labor, one that only women are expected to perform, and offers no compensation. It’s a frustration that Western women mirror. Why should women exert so much time and effort, when so little is expected of men?

The darker side of the movement goes beyond appearance to the safety of women. For years South Korean citizens have called for more protections when it comes to digital sex crimes. Molka, as it’s known, is a lucrative market, selling nude images of unsuspecting women using the toilet, or simply walking over the wrong grate while wearing a skirt. The punishment for digital sex crimes is a meager fine that rarely dissuades continued offenses.

Additionally, South Korea has one of the highest rates of femicide, and intimate partner femicide in the world. Estimates say that roughly every 2 days a woman is killed in S.K., and 98% of homicide victims are women.

Sexual assault is even more prevalent. 80% of women reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In 2023, the Minister of Gender and Family pushed to redefine rape to include non-consensual sexual relationships, but the Minister of Justice struck down the proposal within hours. The current president of the nation is on track to dismantle the Ministry of Gender and Family saying it, “treats men like, “potential sex criminals.”

The lax attitude around violence towards women, according to the Gender in Geopolitics Institute, can be explained by the patriarchal system, primarily Confucianism, that Korean society is built on. The hierarchical system is at odds with feminism and places greater importance on male heirs who are seen as less burdensome. There is even a term for it — “Nam-Jon-Yeo-Bi,” which translates to “The man is higher than the woman.”

For women who choose to start families, the conservative nature of the country routinely forces them to table their careers and put their duties as wives and mothers front and center. However, it’s not as if they’re encouraged to quit their jobs, rather, they are expected to continue their full-time position while also shouldering the majority of household labor and child-rearing.

It’s an exhausting double standard that women around the world face, leading many to find alternate ways to engage with dating and society.

4B movement in America

While the movement started in the East, it addresses a multitude of problems women across the globe feel. In the wake of Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump, Liberal women stateside took the tenants to heart – a decision amplified by a surge of sexism from Right-wing talking heads. In the hours after Trump’s win, they took to TikTok to announce their participation and called for other women to stop dating men, refrain from relationships, and boycott childbirth until a woman’s right to choose is restored.

Conservative women responded with little enthusiasm. They derided their counterpart’s calls, saying “conservative women will procreate,” and celebrating the perceived influx of conservative children. But it’s about more than just relieving men of the option of relationships. The movement is focused on women helping women by investing in female-owned businesses and building communities that have common goals without the pressures of conforming to traditional gender roles.

The backlash against the women behind the 4B movement has been measurable in politics. The South Korean government is taking active steps to dismantle what little feminist progress the country has seen over the last 20 years, to cater to the “young male voters who harbored resentment towards the growing influence of feminism.”