South Korean millennials: 4B and N-Po have ‘given up’

The animosity between Korean men and women has reached a point where some women totally refuse to date men, get married and have children – a phenomenon known as the 4B movement.

As a Korean feminist scholar Living in the US, I have been following this gender war from afar while conducting research on contemporary Korean gender politics.

However, after doing my research on Korean masculinity, I also looked into it myself was published by CNN.

The article described foreign women who traveled to Korea after being excited by the idea of ​​dating Korean men after watching Korean TV dramas. I pointed out that since tourists’ fantasies were based on fictional characters, some of them were disappointed with the Korean men they dated in real life.

The article dealt with racial politics and male ideals. But some Korean readers thought I was just criticizing Korean men for not being romantic and handsome enough. An angry Korean man commented that I was an “ugly feminist”.

But that was harmless compared to what women living in South Korea have endured in recent years.

Extreme misogyny and a feminist backlash

In recent decades there have been hotspots in this war of the sexes.

In 2010, Ilbe, A right site which trades in misogyny began to attract users who has peppered the forums with vulgar posts about women.

Then, in 2015, an online extremist feminist group named Megalia originated. His goal was to fight back Humiliation of Korean Men in a way that mirrored the rhetoric on sites like Ilbe.

A year later, a man who had confessed his hatred of women murdered a random woman in a public restroom near a subway station in Seoul. He was eventually sentenced to decades in prison, but the lines were quickly drawn. On one side were feminists who saw misogyny as an underlying motive. On the other side were men who claimed it was merely the isolated actions of a mentally ill man. The Violent clashes broke out between the two groups during competing protests at the crime scene.

A background of digital sex crimes

However, none of these events has sparked as much public controversy as the surge in digital sex crimes. These are newer forms of sexual violence facilitated by technology: revenge porn; upskirt, which refers to secretly photographing under women’s skirts in public; and hidden cameras used to film women having sex or undressing.

In 2018 there was 2,289 reported cases of digital sex crimes; in 2021 the number shot to 10,353.

Two major incidents involving digital sex crimes occurred in 2019.

In one case, several male K-pop stars were charged with filming and distributing videos of women in group chat rooms without their consent.

A few months later, Koreans were shocked to learn what was called “Incident in the ninth room“, in which hundreds of perpetrators – mostly men – committed digital sex crimes against dozens of women and minors.

They tended to target poorer women — sex workers or women who wanted to make a few bucks by sharing anonymous nude photos of themselves. The perpetrators either hacked into their social media accounts or approached these women and offered them money but asked for their personal information so they could wire the money. After receiving this information, they blackmailed the women by threatening to reveal their sex work and nude photos to their friends and family.

Since sex work And Post nude pictures of yourself online are illegal in Korea, fearing arrest or ostracism from friends and family, women complied with perpetrators’ requests to send even more compromising pictures of themselves. The men then exchanged these pictures in chat rooms.

And yet a 2019 Korean government survey found that large segments of the population blame women for these sex crimes: 52% said they believed sexual violence stemmed from women wearing revealing clothing, while 37% believed women committing sexual acts while intoxicated experienced assaults are partially responsible for their victimization.

In other words, a significant percentage of the Korean population believes so Female sexuality is the problem – not sexual violence.

Government policy lays the foundation

Digital sex crimes are too widespread to be blamed on a handful of perpetrators.

To me, part of the problem stems from the long history of “gender citizenship”.

Korean feminist scholar Seungsook Moon wrote about how The government has created a route for men and another for women when the country sought modernization in the second half of the 20th century:

“Men were mobilized for military service and then deployed as conscripts as laborers and researchers in the industrialized economy. Women were sent to smaller factory jobs and their role as members of the modern nation was largely defined by biological reproduction and housekeeping.”

Although these policies are no longer officially implemented, the underlying attitudes about gender roles remain ingrained in Korean life and culture. Women who move away from motherhood and homemaking face public and private backlash.

The government has introduced gender quotas in certain industries in an attempt to dismantle this system of gendered citizenship.

For example, there are some positions in the public service minimum gender quotas for hiring and the government encourages the private sector to implement similar measures. Traditionally male-dominated sectors such as construction have quotas for hiring women, while traditionally female-dominated sectors such as education There are men’s quotas.

In some ways, this has only made matters worse. Each gender has the feeling that the other receives special treatment because of this funding policy. resentment simmers.

“The Generation That Abandoned”

Nowadays, this intensifies the sense of competition between young men and women rising cost of living and rampant unemployment.

Called “N-po generationMany young South Koreans feel that they cannot achieve certain milestones that previous generations took for granted: getting married, having children, finding a job, owning a home, and even making friends.

Although all genders feel discouraged, the act of “giving up” has caused more problems for women. Men consider women who forego marriage and children to be selfish. And then when they try to compete with men for jobs, some men get angry.

Many of the radicalized men are committing digital sex crimes to get revenge on women who they believe have given up their duties.

Ultimately, the competitive dynamic created by the Korean government’s adoption of gender citizenship has fueled the intense gender war between Korean men and women, using digital sex crimes as ammunition.

The 4B movement, in which Korean women renounce heterosexual dating, marriage and childbirth, represents a radical escalation of the gender war by attempting to create an online and offline world without men. Instead of engaging in arguments, these women refuse to interact with men, period.

Digital sex crimes are a global problem

Of course, digital sex crimes are not unique to Korea.

When I teach my college course on digital sex crimes in the US, I’m amazed at how many of my students admit they have been victims of digital sex crimes or know it happened in their high schools. And at the National Women’s Studies Association Annual meeting in 2022I’ve seen feminist activists and scholars from around the world present their findings on digital sex crimes at home.

Because each country has its own cultural context for the rise in digital sex crimes, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problems. But in South Korea, the further dissolution of the gender citizenship system could be part of the solution.

Min Joo Lee is a postdoc, Indiana University.

This article was republished by The conversation under a Creative Commons license. read this original article.