What is the extreme South Korean feminist movement sweeping America?

No dating, sex, marriage or having children with men: South Korea's extreme feminist movement "4B" has gone viral in America and beyond since Donald Trump won the US presidential election.

In Korean, 4B stands for the "Four Nos": dating, sex, marriage and childbearing with men.

The movement emerged in the mid-2010s in South Korea, against a backdrop of persistent pay disparity, entrenched gender roles, and an epidemic of cyber sex crimes and sexual violence against women.

Yet it has largely remained a fringe campaign.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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