Today, we want to talk about something that I think there has been a lot of international media attention on. We also cover similar topics as part of straight interviews, as well as maybe inviting people like you, who's actually qualified to talk about these things, given the fact that you're a reporter and a journalist. Um, I think without fail, like a lot of people always asking me as if I'm the expert just because we happen to be based in Korea. Hey, what's happening? Why is the fertility rate or the birth rate just crashing right now? What is it? And the last time I checked, was it like, what is it, 0.72? I heard 0.68. Oh yeah, or even 0.65 quarter for quarter. Okay. And I know you've done your research. Uh, to set the tone, you know, in English articles, like newspaper articles, or people always talk about this four B movements. And at first, I didn't know what that meant 'cause I was like, Hey, Stephen, do you know about 4B movements?

I'm like, what's what's 4B movements? And then I realized it's actually those four Korean words. And if you take that all those into consideration, that pretty much explains, at least from the female perspective, why women might not necessarily want to get married. Maybe you can give me an overview of what exactly is this 4B movement. All right, well, P is in Korean, and it's actually a Chinese character, okay, for saying not to do right. So 4B means females do not want to have sex, they do not want to date K men, they do not want to marry, and they do not want to give birth. Forbe women is what some of the minorities in the female group think about. Would you characterize them as possibly radical feminist groups? So why do you think that particular group ideology or these catchphrases became this international thing where even BBC and CNN, they are only talking about, oh, this is because of 4B movements. But maybe we can get into

this little bit 'cause you talk about radical feminists. Are there a lot of them in Korea, or is this like a recent thing, or has been a bit of a trending thing, but now it's kind of died down? What's going on? All right, well, I think we need to first note that this 4B movement, uh, it's not a new thing. I know that New York Times and other foreign media outlets have been paying attention to this movement, and I think it's because it's really catchy and it's quite, uh, very much related to the low fertility rate. But like I said before, it's not a general mainstream idea. Um, most, most of the females, they do not want to get married or have birth, give birth because of many other reasons. For example, like on affordable house prices and the child care that need they need to undertake even when they are working. Those are the main reasons why they do not want to give birth. But it's not like they do not want to date or they do not want to have sex, you know, with guys. So

It's a little bit different. We need to take a look at it in a different way. Sure, and for movement, um, uh, it's not a new phenomenon. Uh, I think this originally was from the Gangnam Station stabbing incident, the tragedy that happened. Maybe for people who don't know what happened there, what maybe give me a brief overview of what happened. So, it was a tragedy that happened in 2016, and uh, this guy who was a stranger to the victim, he was just standing nearby the public uh, bathroom at T Station, and when this young woman came in, he just stabbed her to death. So, he had a knife with him. Yeah, as far as I, as a concealed knife type of thing. So, he was just waiting for his perfect victim, so to speak. Yeah, perfect woman, I guess, uh, and though the police at that time just considered this as an accidental uh, accident, random random mass mass stabbing. Was it a m staby or just one victim? One victim. Okay, one victim. One victim, right. Uh, but this became a watershed moment for all the

young women in their 20s and 30s to express their fear and anger toward this tragedy because I think they thought they caught him. They caught him, and what did he say was the reason why he killed this young lady? Because he had too much experience of being belittled by women. He had this grudge against women. I mean, he sounds like he definitely had some mental issues. He did have mental disorders, but the main issue of this tragedy is not that he was mentally ill. The females in their 20s and 30s, they thought this was a very important issue because it showed the misogyny that is prevalent in society at that time. From that moment, the word feminism got popular, right? And young women, they began to encourage other females not to give in to the society's traditional norms. And there was even the movement called the cetre movement afterwards, and even this radical online community called mealia was opened up.

uh after this tragedy. So, uh, basically, what's the correct free movement, by the way? Oh, um, so basically, there are some of the traditional, I don't know, perspectives that are upon women, how they need to be pretty, how they need to dress a certain way, yeah, dress a certain way, and how to how they need to do their makeup. Um, and since that tragedy, uh, this kind of a trend, I should I say, or phenomenon of females trying to express their anger and trying to not give in to society's traditional norms, have uh, become big. Wow, yeah, so that part I actually didn't know that that particular stabbing incident is what almost like gave rise to this online extremist type of uh, radical feminism. So then, what did they do? Like, do they just organize themselves, you like, online community chat uh, groups, or like, is it just like an online thing, or is it actual coordinated real-life movement as well? Um, they did a lot of camp campaigns, offline campaigns, but most of the uh, things were on online as far as I know. I wasn't in the the

community, so I don't know for sure how they did this kind of C campaigns and other stuff, but uh, it was basically criticizing the misogynist ideas uh, by bonding with other females, right, right, and they would uh, use the tactic or strategy called mirroring, so they would exactly do what males would want them to do to males, like what um, I don't know, for example, like uh, if the males would want the females to, I don't know, dress uh, like a certain way, then they would exactly say the same thing, for example um, I'm not saying all the guys, all the Korean guys were saying like that, but if they say oh, why did you not dress like a woman, or why did you not wear makeup, or if I say uh, why aren't you, some some other girls are prettier than you, those kind of sentences, those kind of words are very uh, first of it's very rude, yeah, it is rude, so they will say rude thing back to the guys type of thing, yes, I see.

so there's like a real backlash in terms of like, Oh, we're going to show you like a female power type of thing. Exactly, right? Right. But it became more and more radical, and as far as I know, there were also internal conflicts even within the feminists. I see, because some feminists, even if they are called feminists, they would want to dress up like a woman, right? They would want to basically, they should be free to do whatever they want. Exactly, exactly. So, um, those people, if they are being criticized by other feminists for not being feminist enough, then they would have internal conflicts within themselves, right? Wow. So, um, at that time, around in 2016 to 2018, I guess, uh, I think that was the time the feminist movement was a very mainstream thing. It was a big thing for Korean society, and uh, as a follow-up movement, the 4B movement came along, uh, after some of the crime cases, uh, emerged. For example, additional crimes, addition crime.

cases like what like uh the weet part cartel case and also the en room. I mean I know about him, but I'm pretty sure I'm not sure if our audiences do. There uh producers of the illegal sexual uh videos, the forensic digital forensic doctors, and those uh who would profit from those videos. So all collude with each other to gain the profit. Okay, so they were basically using uh young women to film those kind of uh videos, and they would just upload to the web part, and they would threaten them to uh give money. Oh, so it's for of a black mayale like with a hey, I'm going to upload your video. But who who was doing this? There was some uh some several groups of them like a group of guys. Yes, group of guys that there was a collusion between those web card users, uh the producers of the videos, and the digital forensic doctors who just tried to uh gain profit by using by exploiting uh these women. And I think that uh those kind of cases along with the nth room which was uh this one

was about the multiple chat rooms on telegram, right? Right. Oh yeah, yeah. I remember hearing about them. So on telegram chats, there were all these um videos, illegal videos of sexual uh yeah things. It's like a revenge porn type of thing, right? So um those kind of crimes let women think that it's not right to date nor have sex with guys because they all could always become victims of those kind of illegal videos. That's why this back even bigger backlash of like hey let's not even date Korean men type of thing came about. Yeah, I think so. So 4 B being um Pon which was no marriage, no marriage. And what was the other ones? P true son. True Sun means no no giving birth. Yeah, no birth. And no dating, no dating. And no sex, no sex. And what happened to these um uh feminists who started looking at these all these crimes and then they wanted to do something about it? Are they are they still there or they kind of dismantled? Uh I think for now uh the

Feminism has become quite dismantled and has weaned a little bit, uh, and I think that's because, like I said before, there were internal conflicts and also because the political parties, the politicians, have decided to be cautious when they're using those kinds of rhetoric, uh, like I said, uh, all of these things happened in 2016 to 2020-ish, um, at that time, uh, it was a big issue, so every politician would use this feminist rhetoric in order to gain votes. They would, uh, use these woman-centric policies, uh, to, you know, appeal to the woman voters, right, um, and at the center of that was actually the liberal, uh, Democratic Party of Korea. Because they are liberalists, uh, they would do, they would do that, but, but, um, after the two main potential presidential candidates who were Pan, the former late mayor, and An, who is a former province governor, uh, they were like two main, uh, presidential candidates within the party, yeah, but they were, um, charged with those sexual harassments and, uh, they had to go against

the allegations of sexual harassment, and that is why the mayor K killed himself. And, uh, so the former Soul mayor, uh, he committed suicide, right? And so the, the, so they were supposed to be on the side of women, exactly, but they, but then they got accused of all these sexual, you know, uh, inappropriateness themselves. Yeah, exactly. It's so ironic, and I think that's the reason why, uh, the DP democra party kind realized that it's quite hard, uh, to use this rhetoric, uh, in favor of themselves, right? Okay, and for the PPP now, PPP, which is um, that's the conservative party, yes, where then candidate, uh, Yun was in. He was supported by young males at that time who thought that they were rather being disadvantaged by these feminist movements. So, uh, is there some truth to that, to their claim, because of the policy of the Liberal Party policy during those time benefited too much of women, almost like reverse discriminated men? Is there like some validity to that claim, or is it more of like a political rhetoric? I

think it was more of a political thing. Okay, yeah, because it is true that there is still inequality regarding the male and female in Korean society. There are still some of the traditional norms that women in Korean society need to succumb to. But I also understand how the young males were feeling quite a disadvantage because at that time, there were so many issues regarding those misogynist crimes, and they were viewed as potential criminals, like all men are. Yeah, all men are dangerous, all men are, which kind of, yeah, so they were quite uncomfortable, right, right about that. I totally understand, but um, that's why then presidential candidate Yooner tried to use it for his presidential campaign, right? He vowed to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and what is it, a family. He's doing right now, by the way. That's exactly the type of thing that the Western media would highlight, this gender conflict, gender wars, right? And so that's why they're like, you know, men and women, they're like at each other's throat.

they're not getting along. They're enemies. That's the narrative they will hear all the time, right? So, what are the situ- what's the situation like in 2024? Do you think that there's still this crazy gender war going on where men and women are both at each other's throat or not at all? Not at all. Okay, not at all. I mean, there could be still some people who are following, who are supporting the feminist rhetoric and who are supporting the other rhetoric as well, but compared to the period of time between 2016 and 2020, at that time, I think the rhetoric itself, the gender war itself, has weaned a lot. Interesting. Okay. I think they're just all so tired of criticizing each other, right? Because there's nothing good out there, and even political parties, politicians are just too cautious right now to come up with those kind of issues. I mean, if you take a look at general elections, they do not have any woman-centric policies. They do not use

any word such as gender War, right? That's because they already have passed that period of time, and they already know that it is quite difficult and risky for them to use those discourses, right, right, right. So, the rhetoric itself, the discourse, has quite weed a bit right now, you know, just from the way you describe it. I'm trying to think of why these things came about, and I think it always starts from some random social media type of thing that gets amplified, in this case, by major political parties as well. But it's always these extreme French movements by people with extreme ideology, maybe because they do that because they think they'll make money or something, or because they must benefit somehow by dividing people, because maybe they can ask for donations or something, or they want to keep it going. But you're saying that the mainstream majority or the populace have gotten sort tired of this thing, and plus they probably grew older. They just grew older, exactly. Oh, that's also true.

yeah, no, um, I mean, I totally agree with you how the feminists at the time were very eager to, I don't, I don't want to use the word educate, but they were eager to let other females know what the concept of feminism is. Oh, I see, so they try to lecture, lecture women. I have my own experience of um, uh, meeting my friend who was a radical feminist. Oh, really? So you had a radical feminist friend. So five of uh, my friends uh, sat down in a, at a table like this. We were having dinner together, and one of my friends was a radical feminist. She told me that it was wrong for me to date a guy, and it was wrong for me to just even think about giving birth. Wow. At that time, she was a radical feminist. What's interesting is that uh, she married. Okay, so she's totally okay now. Yeah, she's totally okay now, and she met a really nice guy, and she loves him. So I think because time passed, I think the whole sentiment has grown quite weak, and um, think about it. At that time, we

were just those uh young females who were just in their 20s. They were just university students who were eager to uh learn more about uh things that they had not known before um but then as you said it it did go to a little bit of two extremes yeah yeah right right and now those people are all fine just getting along and just I mean it's just my friend's uh case so there could be other people who are still supporting the ideas but what I'm saying is that the mainstream the mainstream idea has changed a bit I think yeah so then I think we can move past this whole extreme ideology of forb movements because now you're we're getting to the real root of the issue right CU you're saying yeah this whole birth rate crisis has really got nothing to do with that momentary uh extreme fem radical feminism that happened like five years ago then we can now get into the real cause so what what do you got for me what do you think is the the leading uh

contributing factors, and I'm sure there are many cultural, economical, right, right, uh, there could be two to three reasons, main reasons, okay. [Music]

The Infamous “4B Movement” in Korea Explained

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