4B: The extreme S. Korean feminist movement sweeping America and beyond

Adherents like Baek Ga-eul, 33, say it has allowed them to be a "complete human being, not just a being reserved for a man or children."

The movement arose because South Korean women—who do 3.5 times more work in the home per week than men, official data shows—cannot "accept the expectation to perform both paid labour and the majority of household duties", she said.

In addition, women were fed up with "a male culture that pretends to be proper toward women while, behind closed doors... shares sex videos of their girlfriends with their male friends." 

Why is it trending? 

As it became clear Trump had won the November 5 US presidential election, 4B became one of the top trending search terms on Google in the United States and elsewhere, with search volume increasing to the maximum on the interest scale, Google analytic data shows.

Videos about the movement were soon being widely shared on TikTok and Facebook, Newswhip data shows, with footage of women shaving their heads to protest Trump's victory and breakdowns of the 4B movement particularly viral.

The election was seen by many as a referendum on women's rights, in particular over Trump's appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices which resulted in the end of national abortion rights protections.

It made American women "realise that men do not regard women as equals", activist Baek told AFP.

"How can women love, marry, or have children with men who so openly hate and disregard us?"

"It was only a matter of time before the 4B movement extended beyond South Korea to the world," she said.

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What's happening in South Korea?

The wealthy country has one of the world's lowest birth rates and plummeting rates of marriage.

Nearly 42 percent of South Korean households are headed by a single person, official figures show, and this is likely to rise.

Moreover, a 2021 study by Yonsei University found that more than 40 percent of Seoul residents in their 20s hadn't had sex in a year.

Men cited not having a partner as their primary reason—but for women it was a "lack of interest".

"South Korean women are still participating in the 4B movement in their own ways," one adherent who goes by JH told AFP. 

Even though "there are many Korean women who are not interested in feminism or have never even heard of the 4B", they are inadvertently participating anyway, the 27-year-old said. 

What will it achieve?

Sexism is entrenched in South Korea, said JH, who said she was bullied at work for involvement in the "Escape the Corset" feminist movement which rebels against strict beauty standards by, for example, encouraging women not to wear makeup. 

She eventually lost her job.

"What I went through is not unique for women in a misogynistic Korea," she said.

"Boycotting men" is one of the most effective ways to show the severity of sexism in the country, said Kang Ji-young, another 4B participant.

The movement has grown out of "South Korean women's painful contemporary experiences" said Keung Yoon Bae, a Korean studies professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States.

"It's ultimately most accurate to view the movement as a symptom, one that reflects the untenable nature of pre-existing patriarchal norms of Korean society in light of the vastly increased number of high-achieving, well-educated women," she said.

Is this a new election trend?

In the US election, "voting patterns were strongly divided by gender across racial groups", Sharon Yoon, a Korean studies professor at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, told AFP, adding it was similar to South Korea's 2022 presidential election. 

In South Korea, data indicates that men and women are increasingly ideologically opposed—with young men skewing far more conservative, which helped to propel President Yoon Suk Yeol to power in 2022, after he promised to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality.

"The gendered divide that we are seeing in voting behavior is not particular to a country, but is pointing to a global trend of gendered backlash among a growing base of economically precarious men," she said. 

"The rise of President-elect Trump will also trigger a strong response from American women," she said. 

"Their expressions of solidarity with Korean women in the 4B movement should be seen as one, but not the sole, manifestation of this emerging trend."