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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll wrap up today's show with a story about women's rights from abroad here in Women's History Month, including a call-in if we happen to have any women listening from South Korea or of Korean descent on the so-called 4B Movement to not have children and otherwise limit heterosexual involvement with men in that patriarchal society. If you have experience with this yourself or with someone you know, 212-433-WNYC.

For everyone else, have you come across headlines about South Korea's declining birth rate? The country has held the title of having the lowest fertility rate in the world, but recent statistics have shown it plummeting even further. In 2022, as has been reported, the average number of babies a South Korean woman is expected to give birth to during her lifetime fell to 0.72 from 0.78 the year before and projections estimate that this will fall even further to 0.68 in 2024, according to Al Jazeera. In other words, women in South Korea are having on average fewer than one child, which means many are having none.

In the capital city of Seoul, the decline is especially concentrated apparently with a reported fertility rate of 0.55. Roughly one child per two women. At this rate, the country's population may be cut in half by 2100 and South Koreans as an ethnicity would cease to exist in 700 years if that trajectory actually continued.

Why is this happening? Well, a massive South Korean women have chosen this path in a country that exports visions of handsome chivalric men through the production of K-pop and K-dramas, many women are opting out of relationships with men entirely participating in what they've dubbed the 4B, number four, letter B, 4B movement. They argue that Korean patriarchy is so pervasive that the only way to escape is to "eliminate the risks that come from heterosexual marriage or dating." That's a quote from The Cut, part of New York Magazine.

Let's look into the conditions for women in South Korea that have led to such a radical choice for so many. Joining me now is Anna Louie Sussman, freelance journalist covering gender economics, health, and reproduction. She's written a number of articles on South Korea's 4B movement in publications like The Atlantic and The Cut. Also with us is Meera Choi, sociology PhD candidate at Yale, researching heterosexual refusal in South Korea. Anna, Meera, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Anna Louie Sussman: Thank you for having us.

Meera Choi: Hello. Thank you for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Anna, can you start us off by explaining more about what the 4B movement is and what 4B stands for?

Anna Louie Sussman: Absolutely. B is a prefix. It's transliterated or anglicized into bi or be that means no. The four things that women are saying no to, no dating men, no sex with men, no marriage, and no giving birth. You can think of 4B as both in ideology or philosophy a way of thinking about things. It's also practically a lifestyle in which women make every effort to live mostly among other women. They patronize women-owned businesses and generally try to distance themselves as much as they can from the men in their lives, including sometimes even their male cousins or childhood male friends.

A lot of times women find these ideas online in chat rooms, on social media, but it resonates with them and appeals to them because of their own lived experience with a very patriarchal society. Whether that's something they experienced in their home growing up, facing discrimination within their own household, or even unfortunately sometimes physical abuse or verbal abuse or it's discrimination at school or workplace, or being mistreated by a partner in their personal lives, or even just reading the news--

Brian Lehrer: Oops, did we lose Anna's line

Anna Louie Sussman: Crimes and gender-based crimes. I think what's interesting here is that there are real practical concerns here is the country with the worst gender pay gap in the OECD, it's very expensive to live there. Real estate and rent have gone up. There's growing inequality and so these women are trying to answer the question of, well, how can we as women who don't make a lot of money live sustainably? They're very concerned with personal finance.

They share investing tips with one another, like where you can get a good interest rate on your savings. They advise one another not to spend money on clothes and to prioritize savings and financial security especially as they get older, since they know because they're not going to have kids, that they won't have dependents who will support them. They explore co-living arrangements. They often live with roommates or sometimes female romantic partners, and they even go so far as to retrain in fields such as IT where they know they can earn more.

I think we talked to people who they were working in teaching or a lower-paid job, and then they decided, you know what, if I'm going to live on my own and be a woman in this society and support myself, I need to do something more lucrative.

Brian Lehrer: Meera, let me turn to you and ask, how widespread is the 4B movement in South Korea and would you directly tie its ideas to the country's declining birth rate?

Meera Choi: Yes. I guess there is no nationally representative survey data that shows how many people are participating in 4B movement. There has been efforts and surveys that shows that women are increasingly being aware of 4B movement. There was a survey in 2019 that said two out of three women in South Korea are aware of 4B movement and this awareness is increasing. I believe that and I would have much more to say about the connection to declining birth aid. Would you want to add onto that?

Anna Louie Sussman: Absolutely. Not only is Meera correct in that there's a very widespread, it's been covered by the South Korean media. If I'm covering it in the US, you can be sure that the South Korean media has also covered this extensively. Not only do people know about it and it spreads online and Korea's a very, very online society with extremely high penetration of cell phones and very high-speed internet all over the country, including on public transit, but even women who would not identify as 4B or even women who say they would like a boyfriend or a partner were very skeptical that they would find a Korean man who would treat them as an equal, who they could trust to not, for example-- this came up over and over, to film them if they were to be intimate together.

They were really scared that their boyfriend, someone who they trusted enough to go to bed with might actually film them when they were together. There's just a lot of hesitation and fear and suspicion around Korean men. Again, even from women who would identify as heterosexual and aren't necessarily qua 4B.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any questions or stories? Are there any women listening in who are so tired of patriarchy you've given up on men entirely? Maybe there are listeners with ties to South Korea who have particular insights on the gender conflict there, declining birth rate, or anything else you want to add or a question for our guest, call or text 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 again for Anna Louie Sussman, I'm sorry, freelance journalist covering gender economics, health, and reproduction, who's written about South Korea's 4B movement in The Cut and in The Atlantic, and Meera Choi sociology, PhD candidate at Yale researching heterosexual refusal in South Korea. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Meera, here's a question coming in in a text message. Listener writes, are single women able to adopt in Korea?

Meera Choi: Yes. It is very almost impossible in Korea to adopt children as a single woman and also you're not even legally allowed to give birth outside of heterosexual union. If you freeze your eggs, you are not able to retrieve or use it without a male partner in the clinic. It is quite hard to raise children as single women, give birth to children as single women

Brian Lehrer: Another listener writes, notably in every country, this dramatic split, they're talking about women becoming more politically progressive as time goes on and men becoming more politically conservative, either exclusive to the younger generation or far more pronounced than among men and women in their 30s and upwards. Then this continues. Unlike the US where the gap is mostly because young women have become more liberal progressive, in South Korea, women have become more liberal and progressive, but the real change is that young men have become dramatically more conservative. Anna, do you know enough about that to confirm or refute?

Anna Louie Sussman: That data is correct. The FT just published a list of charts and graphs that documented this phenomenon all over the world. I think what struck the caller, and what is striking for a lot of people is we tend to think that younger generations will become more progressive. That society in general gets more progressive over time, and that younger people are more progressive because they're not old and conservative. That, I think, has historically been the trend.

To see young men reporting that they're far more likely to say that feminism has gone too far or that men are discriminated against. These are some of the different survey questions that are asked in different countries. I think it's very surprising. There's a real question that I think you talk a lot about misinformation and disinformation and divergent realities on this show as it affects democracy. It's a serious repercussion for politics as well as personal relationships when people are occupying two different realities and have very different perceptions of how society treats different groups.

Not only do you not have people forming marital unions, which, as Meera said, is really important because I believe it's something like only 2% of births take place outside of marriage in Korea, which compared to, I think it's in the 40% in the US and in some European countries. If people aren't getting married, you're going to have very few births. That's why the heterosexual crisis and the gender conflict is so important for the birth rate in Korea.

I think more broadly across different countries, you see this divide among young people and then you see political entrepreneurs stepping in to make hey with that gender divide. South Korea is a prime example, and I know Meera can talk about the president and the campaign that he ran on, which is really explicitly targeted to these conservative young men.

I think another thing that might surprise listeners in the US who are used to thinking about progressive and conservative or liberal and Democrat and Republican with a big educational split. If my understanding is correct, Meera can chime in on this. There's a lot of educated young men who voted for the president who ran on a openly anti-feminist platform.

Brian Lehrer: Meera, do you want to keep going on that?

Meera Choi: Yes. There has been a noticeable political backlash. During the presidential campaign, the President Yeol has really relied on anti-feminist rhetoric saying that feminism distorted men's and women's relationships. He also denied that systematic discrimination against women existed. He also promised to abolish the ministry of gender equality and family. As a result of that, he gained 59% of male votes, but only 34% of female votes, particularly among young adults in their 20s, which is like marking the most substantial gender gaps seen across all age groups.

This all really resonates with the existence of misogynist online communities that are identified as far-right anti-feminist, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBTQ. There's also a growing activism, not only by working-class men but more elite men as well of anti-feminist men's rights group called the New Men's Solidarity in South Korea. These kinds of data really shows how the political backlash and the rise of feminism and anti-feminism is really contributing to the crisis of heterosexuality.

Brian Lehrer: What century are we living in?

Meera Choi: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Ari in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Ari.

Ari: Hi, Brian. Thank you for having me. I just wanted to mention that I lived in South Korea when I was 12, and I noticed that the beauty standards for Korean women aren't realistic. They prefer more of a Western look, and then the marriage standards are also very specific. They're family-oriented. They don't want people who are orphans. Even they prefer women who are younger. Even if you're in your 30s, you don't have as much of a chance to get married because they want you to have kids when you're younger.

Also, the traditional values for women in Korea are a little, like you said, not of this century. They don't prefer when women smoke or drink or gamble. Even women shouldn't be pouring their own drinks, things like that. I think it's important that women do rely on each other because they need that support group.

Brian Lehrer: Ari, thank you very much for your call. We just have a minute left. Meera, let me ask you, patriarchy is a global phenomenon, but women all over the world haven't just decided to give up on men or the backlash among men isn't as severe as you were just describing as in Korean politics. Why there?

Meera Choi: I think South Korean patriarchy has really revealed its toxic masculinity to another level and considering how the 4B movement began in 2018 as a direct reaction to the prevalence of digital sex crimes really show that as well. It became almost impossible to miss daily news reports on sex crimes since then. These women have begun to realize that the men were not just consumers, but also a part of a profitable industry exploiting women through bi-cam videos and non-consensual films.

This realization really sparked broader awareness among women that the problem of patriarchy really extends beyond marriage and childbearing that confine women to domestic roles, but also to how women are being objectified in sexual and romantic relationships as well.

In Korea, I think patriarchy is really perpetuated by toxic masculinity, which is reinforced and socialized through male bonding in the military and workplace. Men are often pressured to prove their masculinity by participating in group prostitution, which can really foster harmful solidarity. Efforts to combat these issues are growing, but so is the backlash. Many women find the response inadequate, feeling that their voices are not truly heard or taken seriously. Women are [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That has to be the last word because we are flat out of time. Thank you so much, Meera Choi, who is just speaking, sociology PhD candidate at Yale researching heterosexual refusal in South Korea, and Anna Louise Sussman, freelance journalist who's written about this in The Atlantic and The Cut and elsewhere. Thank you both so much.

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