E. Tammy Kim at n+1:
There’s a movement, or voguish tendency, in South Korea called 4B, which emerged online as part of a #MeToo-style feminist resurgence in 2016. It pushed a four-pronged refusal of marriage, reproduction, dating, and sex. (The B is for 비 bhee, meaning un- or anti-.) When a right-wing prosecutor named Yoon Suk Yeol rallied men’s-rights voters to win the nation’s presidency in 2022, the feminist wave seemed decidedly over. But Trump’s reelection two years later provoked an American interest in 4B. According to some viral TikToks and newspaper articles, American women were disavowing heterosexual habits. The dust of 4B in Korea swirled temporarily back to life.
I was in Seoul with my parents when I noticed the Korean social media posts quoting US social media posts celebrating dated Korean social media posts. My editor asked me to write a short piece about 4B, which I started to outline at the dining table of our rental in the Itaewon neighborhood, near the decommissioned US military base.
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