4B is a South Korean feminist practice built on four refusals: no dating or romance, no sex, no marriage, and no childbirth. Participants treat those refusals as a political statement against gendered expectations, but how personal and how collective that statement is differs from one person to the next. The movement has no known membership, no single founder, and no agreed start date, so the most accurate way to discuss it is through the evidence that exists, and that evidence is limited.
What the four Bs are
The name comes from the four Korean terms that each begin with “bi,” meaning “no” or “refusal.” Romanized, they are biyeonae, bisekseu, bihon, and bichulsan. The table below sets out each one and the English glosses used in writing about the movement.
| Term | Refusal | English gloss in the sources reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| biyeonae | No dating or romance | Scholarly writing says “romance”; news reporting says “dating.” |
| bisekseu | No sex | “Sex” in both scholarly and news writing. |
| bihon | No marriage | “Marriage” in both scholarly and news writing. |
| bichulsan | No childbirth | “Childbirth” in both scholarly and news writing. |
The translation difference matters more than it looks. “Romance” points to emotional and relational attachment, while “dating” points to the social practice of going out with someone. Readers who see the movement described one way or the other are often reading the same refusal through different English words.
Where the movement came from
4B emerged in South Korea in the mid-to-late 2010s, in a setting of digital feminist activism. It is usually linked to related actions of the period, including Escape the Corset. No source reviewed for this piece fixes a founding date or names a founder, and no single organization speaks for it. Any single date or name you see attached to the movement should be treated as one account rather than settled fact.
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What participants say the choice means
The most detailed evidence comes from a 2020 qualitative study by Miseon Kang, SeongHee Kim, and Inhye Jung. It interviewed 12 participants in Seoul and nearby areas who had committed to a 4B life. Its account of motives rests on those conversations, and it is not a count of how many people practise 4B.
A personal choice that is also a collective message
The study reports that participants described 4B as both a personal decision and a message addressed to others. Their values had formed through social media and online communities, through Escape the Corset, and through participation in the “Uncomfortable Courage Demonstrations.” Participants framed the refusal as a way of pushing back against the patriarchal system, and in their own translated words it was “the most basic, personal and fundamental movement to topple the patriarchal system” and “the choice made by loving oneself.” These are participants’ descriptions as translated in the study abstract, not a slogan the movement adopted.
Wanting to be seen as individuals
The same participants did not want to be reduced to a group label. A political refusal can be read as a uniform identity from outside, but the people who live it described their reasons as their own. Readers should keep that tension in view: the refusal is shared in form, while the reasons behind it vary.
Solidarity alongside ambivalence
The study also describes solidarity among participants and ambivalence about the commitment. Some accounts show people drawn to the collective meaning of 4B while still uncertain about where the personal boundaries sit. That mix is what a qualitative study can reveal, and it is also why the findings should not be stretched into a description of everyone who uses the term.
How scholars and journalists frame it
A 2021 scholarly article reads 4B as a refusal of heterosexual marriage, childbirth, romance, and sexual relationships, and it considers what a non-reproductive future might look like in Korea. That is an analytical framing by the author, not a platform issued by the movement.
An essay in the Yale Journal of International Affairs (2025) places 4B within South Korea’s gendered political economy and within its later spread beyond the country. It helps explain why the refusal can be read as resistance to patriarchal expectations. It is interpretive, however, and it does not speak for participants.
ABC News reported on the movement on November 13, 2024. It quoted Lee Min-gyeong, feminist author of Reclaim the Language, who described 4B as more than a “sex strike” and linked it to pressure around gender roles. Her words, as published, were: “The 4B movement is about crying out that it is no [longer] possible to get in relations [with] a man, in any way,” she said. The brackets are part of the published report.
The social context, with its limits
Participants and commentators tie 4B to the gender gaps and social pressures of South Korea. The figures below are often cited in that discussion. Each one comes from a specific publication and has to be read with its date and origin.
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|---|---|---|
| South Korean women earned 68.8 cents for every dollar earned by men | ABC News report (November 13, 2024), citing 2022 data and identifying the figure as the OECD’s lowest | This is ABC’s attribution. The original OECD dataset was not checked for this article. It describes pay inequality, not the cause of 4B or the number of people practising it. |
| 0.72 fertility rate for South Korea | Yale Journal of International Affairs essay (2025), which gives the figure for South Korea | Check the figure against the national statistical publisher before citing it as an official statistic. It is context for the childbirth refusal, not evidence that 4B changed fertility. |
Neither figure shows that 4B caused a change in pay or in birth rates, and neither measures how many people take part in the movement. They describe the conditions that participants and commentators say the refusal responds to.
How big is the movement?
Nobody has established a reliable count. ABC News quoted Ming Gao of Australian Catholic University, who said: “It’s been around for some years, but I wouldn’t say it has ever been mainstream or widely recognised in South Korea,” Dr Gao said. ABC describes the movement as largely online, which makes its participants hard to count. The 12 people in the 2020 study were chosen for interviews and are not an estimate of the movement’s size. Any headline number for participants should be treated with suspicion unless its method is stated.
How the idea travelled abroad
ABC News framed 4B as a movement rising in the United States, with its origins in South Korea. Interest beyond Korea is best understood as diffusion and local reinterpretation. A refusal adopted in another country takes on that country’s gender politics, economic pressures and online culture, so it may carry a different meaning there. The Korean context is not a template that travels unchanged. The reporting and essays reviewed do not measure how many people outside Korea identify with 4B or what they mean by it.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Three ways to read “breaking the patriarchy”
The question behind this article can be put as an editorial question rather than a claim that any one source makes: how does refusing the expected milestones of dating, marriage, and motherhood challenge patriarchy? The sources support three different ways of answering it, and each one depends on a different kind of evidence.
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- Individual lifestyle versus collective refusal. Participants describe a personal choice that also carries a public message. Whether it counts as political depends on whether the choice is shared and understood as such.
- Korean origin versus international uptake. The movement’s meaning was shaped in South Korea. Its later use elsewhere may borrow the vocabulary without the same social conditions.
- Qualitative evidence versus prevalence claims. The interview study shows how some people reason about 4B. It cannot show how common those reasons are, and no reviewed source does.
If you are reading this for “Wine Chats,” the useful test is to ask which of these three levels a claim is operating on. A claim about one person’s reasons is a different kind of statement from a claim about the movement as a whole.
For further reading, Reclaim the Language by Lee Min-gyeong is the book quoted in the ABC report.
The Bottom Line
4B can be personal and political at once: participants describe a private decision that they also treat as a public refusal of patriarchal expectations. But no single participant, author or report speaks for everyone who uses the term, and no reliable count of the movement exists. The newest source used here is a 2025 essay, so this picture reflects reporting and scholarship up to that point.
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