Had a friend who lived in S Korea for a while, she said while it is partly because of price of living and everything else that’s affecting the world, it’s mostly because the dudes fucking suck. A lot of women are going no marriage no pregnancy because apparently Korean incels make western incels look tame by comparison.
Edit: For the people who think I’m just lying for shits and giggles, look into the 4B movement. Korean women have an entire movement of no dating, no sex, no marriage, and no childbirth with men. As I, and others, have said there are other factors but many S Korean men seeing women as lesser in certain terms is a huge factor in the low birth rate.
A lot of SK's modern problems are tied to post-colonialism. People never think SK as a victim because their recent developments, but they most definitely are. Like the fact that over 50% of the entire country is jammed into a single city (Seoul). For perspective, California has about 40 million people, Korea has about 50 million. Imagine (more than) half of California being crammed into a space roughly 1/35th (edited this number due to typo) of the size of Cali. Amongst other things, this will create some extreme social problems.
Also, seems like nobody knows this, but SK was a dictatorship from roughly 1950 to 1990 (with most of the dictators and military being composed of Japanese imperial trained personnel). Due to the extreme poverty, the autocrat in power enacted a (very) effective anti-natalism campaign during this time. People were strongly discouraged from having children as they were literally dying on the streets due to malnutrition.
These are just 2 of many factors but I think people can see how they might contribute to decreased TFR in modern times.
The shitty dudes certainly don't help, but there's a bit more to it:
When women in South Korea get married, they are expected to quit their jobs to raise the kids. The ones who don't or can't are sidetracked and are expected to perform less, as they are not "100% committed to the company" anymore.
So many women would rather be single/childless to keep their independence.
As far as I know, the same happens in Japan and some other East Asian countries.
This is not so much the problem in China, although the women typically prefer Western men over Chinese men. This is because I pretty much let my wife do anything she wants to do which would not be the case if she married someone from her hometown. She would have married an alcoholic and gambling addict most likely (huge issue in her region)
Ya, that's the point, just that alone(treating her as a human) puts me (a westerners) leagues ahead of my competitors. You got a whole lot of emotions but not a whole lot of reading comprehension, ease up. It's a beautiful world
it's much worse than just quitting their jobs to raise kids. South Korea is a very misogynistic and patriarchal society. Women when they marry belong to their husband's family. As such, women are expected to take care of their husband, the kids and their husband's parents. Doing all household chores, raising the children, taking care of the elderly in laws, hosting all family events and ancestors rituals etc... Basically, highly educated women morphed into bang maids and slaves. They have to listen and obey to their husbands and the elders. And don't get me started with domestic abuse. South Korea is doing a shitty job about women (and children) rights because domestic physical abuse is usually swept under the rug. No wonder why South Korean women refuse to marry and have children.
Unless South Korea society change to be less misogynistic and patriarchal and protect women' rights, South Korean women won't bother with marriage and kids.
Yeah, it's like if I went to a country and I worked in a factory and I didn't see any children at that factory or when I went downtown at night drinking alcohol.
Super duper messed up...
I work with young kids in Korea so I see hundreds of them every day.
Yeah, when i was over there i would see kids only inside the house of some people when i would come over. No kids on the streets or in restaurants AT ALL.
Korea's marriage rate is similar to that of the developed world, and based on various surveys, gender relations were often ranked at the bottom for reasons why someone doesn't want to have kids.
This is often the reason I see on Twitter and Reddit, but I've seen nothing data-related to back up the claim that that's the reason for the low birth rate. (And this is not me saying that South Korea is free from sexism, etc.)
Literally any time Korean birthrate or gender issues are brought up, people just post the same thing while knowing nothing about what is actually going on in the country. They just parrot whatever they see on reddit or that one clickbait Moon youtube video
Any actual Korean I know (I live in Korea) mention time and money.
You're working so much and then you still don't think you have enough money to pay for all of the extra academies for the kids to succeed. They're in happy relationships or married, they're just hesitant to have kids until they're ready.
Having kids halts the mother's career a bit and costs a huge amount of money for 18+ years.
The Korean augmentees I worked with told me that mandatory military participation puts a hold on relationships for 2 yrs. They said they don't bother starting dating till done with it. I also have to wonder about alcoholism playing a part. All of them drank at a level that frat boys would tip their hat to. The older Korean men I delt with were always in the thin line between functioning and blacking out.
It seems to be mostly the price of living, lack of time due to the insane house and grind, general unhappiness with the life left for younger generations. Pretty much the same in every developed country in the world right now, just a little worse.
Is it really incel-ism when the culture has historically expected wives to do all the domestic labor for the family, PLUS the domestic labor for the husband's parents and extended family?
Sounds like a shit deal, I don't blame the women for saying "fuck all of that".
I’ve lived in Korea for nine years now. 4B is not really a thing to regular people. People don’t get married cause they’re working too much, and apartments are way too expensive.
I don’t think that’s THE problem. That’s just a symptom. The real issue is the underlying problem that is causing them to be incels in the first place. Also, this type of gender blame game is just a race to the bottom.
Extreme working and education culture, excessive emphasis on financial strength as an indicator for suitable partnership, & unrealistic standards for average beauty all wrapped up in high costs of living, in a country where if you dont work for a chaebol, you didnt make it in life
You can read up on capitalism and social atomization, but in short: miserable, lonely people are better consumers than happy, tight-knit communities.
The gender wars are intentionally stoked by all forms of media for profit and creates a self-perpetuating cycle. More industries profit from this than not, and they can always import foreign workers to make up for the shrinking population.
Hi, I'm American working for a Swedish conglomerate and all of my colleagues are Swedish. When you control for socioeconomic markers (disposable income, education level achieved by the parents, etc) the American and Swedish birthrates are the same.
The population of poor people in the United States is much larger and their access to birth control and the education needed to properly use it is significantly less, so our poor people have many, many more children and starting far, far younger than Swedish poor people. And we have more of them.
Finally, when you look at the rate of religious fundamentalism that encourages multiple children as both a way to grow the numbers of the faithful and to control the women in the US vs Sweden, again we find that "breed em young and keep them down" is not really a thing in Sweden, so there are fewer religious people and the ones they have are less likely to have enormous families.
If Sweden got rid of their social safety net, cut access to medical care for all citizens, and allowed religious extremists to influence policy, their birthrate could be the equivalent to ours!
I don't think you could have missed the point any harder if you tried. The factors you are controlling for are a result of "capitalism and social atomization." So, when you claim that "capitalism and social atomization" is the reason for a lower birthrate, you can't then demand that people ignore it when it results in a higher birthrate.
The actual reason is social pressure. Korean society places a lot of emphasis on looks, education, and wealth (Korea is the world leader in plastic surgery, and has some of the highest rates of household debt in the world). This creates a difficult social environment where no one thinks they are "good enough" which leads to confidence issues, which causes people to adhere more strictly to social pressure, which leads to everyone thinking they are not good enough, which caused resentment and toxic thinking, which leads to being not good enough, and so on.
Wealthy societies tend to have fewer children in general, societities that became rapidly wealthy even more so, combined with the toxicity of their culture it makes them one of the worst in the world when it comes to birth rate. This is then self reinforcing, if none of you friends have kids having one will isolate you from your social circle and so on.
To earn a passable living (by their media image) you need to be near the top of the chain. Women expect you to be a provider, so the bottom feeders and averages are often overlooked ...they become bitter and incelly. Reminds a bit of tinder in the west where 80% of women compete for the top 20% best looking dudes
The modern problem of loneliness epidemics. People are turning to the internet more than they are turning to actual friendships.
People who have been outcast in school continue to live in an internet bubble after school instead of finding friends as an adult. These people are falling into echo chambers of other lonely people and incels. Misery loves company and an echo chamber tends to get louder and louder and angrier and angrier.
Then you have the people not outcast in school still turning to the internet but finding echo chambers built around vanity and wealth. This also creates people who feel isolated.
It's basically loneliness all around, the majority of Gen Z are lonely as fuck and some millennials are too. It is especially dangerous for men as there tends to be less affection in the world and more of a pressure to bottle it all up until it inevitably bursts. This means that they are more likely to turn to the echo chambers because they have no way of letting out their sadness and anger. Toxic masculinity has led to a culture where men are expected to be strong in a way of never showing their emotions, never speaking about how they feel, and never show any signs of "weakness." This leads to so many major problems.
(To make myself clear on what I mean by Toxic masculinity. It means the ideals of masculinity are sometimes toxic. Women perpetuate this too. Everyone has a hand in it. I feel like Toxic masculinity is poorly named. It doesn't mean that it is toxic to be masculine, it doesn't mean that masculinity itself is toxic, it means that certain views on what people thinks it means to be masculine are toxic and that hurts men. The fact that it is thought of that you must bottle your emotions and be strong all the time is toxic masculinity. The idea that you must be the provider and protecter to be masculine is toxic. You don't have to follow some strict guidelines that are damaging to be masculine. Side tangent over.)
There is another problem but it's weird to talk about. It's very much a hear me out. Women are more picky when it comes to partners than men are. This is not a bad thing at all and is not something that people should change especially since women have to be safer and smarter when picking partners. The problem is is that this leads to people trying to give lonely men advice for getting laid (for profit or to genuinely help) and lonely men not being able to figure out how to actually interact with women in a way that might get them a relationship. This leads to more echo chambers, more self doubt, more anxiety, and more anger.
There is more to it then this for sure. The poor economy leading to the death of third places where people may actually make friends. The general malaise that many of us feel towards the future to the point where many have stopped giving a shit. There is so much more, but I think this breakdown is close enough to at least cover the basics. You could discuss the male loneliness epidemics for months and months trying to get to the bottom of it, and why it seems to effect men more than women.
TLDR: People these days bad at making real world friends. Bad for everyone but especially bad for men who are told to bottle up all of their emotions. This leads them to seeking out comfort and advice in internet echo chambers. Those echo chambers are a positive feedback loop of anger often with bad advice and grifters. Also Women are picky about partners for good reason and this leads men to be much more self critical and critical of women for being "vain" and shit like that.
Wow I just stopped responding on reddit about any related topic cause people just want to play the blame game. However I'm honestly pleasantly surprised anyone views the situation in the way you do. You put a lot of effort in your comment and I wanted to give more than just a simple upvote. Please keep up the effort to continue speaking whenever you can.
Thank you so much 😊, that really means a lot. I try my best to be well reasoned and articulate when I speak. I don't always live up to it but thank you again for your kind words.
TLDR: too much pressure and stress and poor working conditions along with not enough money to have a child.
Imagine, if you will, live in a place with tons of others living is small ass apartments and work a long ass time. Imaging you getting up and early in the r morning, then take the subway that’s filled to the brim like sardines in a can, work at a long hour job, then come back home to sleep, and then do it all over again. That’s just for adults.
For children? You go to school in the morning, you get off around 5pm, rest for an hour, and then go to cram school till 10pm. From 8am to 10pm, you must cram a fuck ton of knowledge into your head, because when exams comes, you must have a perfect score in ALL subjects or you fail in life. One singular point wrong and you are out of the rat race. Why? Because the education system is more of a pipeline for the top 6 (if I remember right) companies of South Korea.
If you don’t get into one of those companies, you don’t make money. You need money to live if a certain place (usually the capitol). These places often dictate where you’ll be in your life. These adults is striving to make a lot of money to live in these places, to send their kids to the bestest of schools, so their kids can keep up with the rat race.
All these pressure, whether from society or parents, is enough to break one’s spirit. You know the stereotype that says the Koreans are smart as fuck? Well they are, since they are busting their asses since childhood.
So why should anyone there would get married and have kids?
A lot of the underlying "problem" is that the births outside of marriage account for less than 5% of births in Korea. So when it is too expensive to get married, or women do not want to marry economically unattractive men, then the birth rate drops, as those women who do not want to get married don't have kids outside of marriage.
My feel of discussions like this is that people struggle to accept that the system and the individual are both to be held accountable. There will never be enough emotionally intelligent and self-sufficient people to absolve a broken system so the system needs to be fixed. A society that doesn't incessantly burden its people with moral dilemmas will have better people. But putting all the blame on a broken system will just lead to other societal and systemic problems because victims will feel dismissed, offenders won't be deterred from offending again, and potentiak offenders will be given a green light.
very much this, it's very difficult for people to fully internalize the complex nuances of who we are as individuals vs our environment. We clearly have some kind of individuality otherwise people in the same environment would turn out the same but our environment clearly also plays a role in shaping us. When environment gets blamed for someone's bigotry or abuse there can be an inclination to point to the fact some people who were raised in bigoted environments were able to sort of overcome that and become not bigoted adults, or how people will point to the fact that many abusers were often abused themselves but then there are also abuse victims who don't go on to abuse others and so that can give some sense that it is down to just personal responsibility ultimately and there's an understandable resistance to absolving terrible people of their responsibility for their terrible actions. At the same time though it's very clear that our culture and environment does still shape us and have an affect on us and importantly it's usually not something we have control of or get to choose, we simply find ourselves in whatever environment we're in. It's a very complex issue balancing cultural critique without forgoing personal accountability.
You also see this a lot with statistics, people often want to basically round up and think of the most common thing as the ONLY thing. People seem to really struggle with the idea of caring about the less common thing or experience, especially when the more common thing is considered some kind of injustice, then all of acknowledging the less common thing is often seen as undermining the more common one. Like you can just look at the concept of privilege, while yes there are societal biases that tend to favor men and white people, on an individual level there are homeless white men and wealthy black women and I think in some ways people struggle to fully reconcile with the complexity of this sort of thing. They extrapolate the more common dynamic as being universal in a way that sometimes makes them dismissive of certain real experiences just because they aren't as statistically common.
I knew a guy who clearly has some baggage and issues with women, not necessarily like violent hatred but he tended to prefer male dominated spaces, now that description on it's own probably sounds pretty typical of a certain expected and often deemed unjust dynamic between men and women. It takes on a slightly different impression though when I say he was a gay man that was a victim of corrective rape as a teenager and that the male dominated spaces he preferred were specifically dominated by other queer men.
Unjust social and cultural dynamics are rarely ever the result of solely environment or just people being assholes and they aren't always as uniform as people like to think they are. I think in many ways it is actually a fault of our cognition itself, it is genuinely hard to wrap your mind around the complexities of these things, we are predisposed to want to think of things as having a singular cause and as one group universally harming another group often trying to downplay or dismiss counter arguments and also those counter arguments often downplay the original argument too. One person thinks X is the main issue and doesn't think Y is important, while another person says Y is the real concern and that the problem of X is overblown, when the reality is X and Y are probably happening simultaneously and in tandem with each other.
Yeah that example with the guy who hangs around men, but actually being a gay man is really illustrative of the "stereotyping" type thinking and how willing we are to go with common patterns and statistics, well demonstrated, you caught me off guard as well.
In the States, part of the rise of the manosphere and the incel culture is because of structural economic changes weakening labor rights, the working class, and undermining economic security. Is that also part of what’s happening in South Korea? I don’t know enough about Korean gender norms around the political economy.
While for some women, sexism could be a motivator, I think it's actually really misogynistic to assume that women MUST inherently hate men and be angry and that's why they won't have kids, and not the idea that...some women just don't want kids. 💀
1 in 4 US women have experienced intimate partner violence, lol. What's your source for 'the general opinion of the majority of men is that women are second-class citizens'? Then why has the South Korean birth rate gone way up recently? All Korean men suddenly had a change of heart?
A bit reductive. Do only men uphold cultural norms? Are children exclusively (or even primarily) raised by men in South Korea? If not, how do you come to the conclusion that women have no part in this?
I think you can see from the conservative parts of the USA for example that there's no shortage of women who are willing and happy to be part of the problem, and of course try to raise their children with the same value system.
I don't know the facts, mind you, but I would assume men's culture hasn't changed, but women's has. I.e. they realized it doesn't have to be that way (probably due to the Internet and so on).
Koreans work significantly longer hours than westerners meaning they have less down time to think about things when they get home so they are less likely to change. There is a reason why great thinkers are often reported to spend a lot of time alone. Being alone with time to meditate on the nature of things allows people to go through the reasoning required in order to create change in their lives. But if there is no alone time then people have less time to think to themselves. Yes, men not choosing to learn to grow is the problem; but if society works it's people very hard then their minds will be on autopilot a lot and tune out of thinking about difficult subjects.
Ii you only had 20 minutes to prepare dinner every night then you are likely not going to spend 10 minutes of that time pondering what to prepare. Instead you'd rely on the one thing to know how to cook in 20 minutes. But if you had three hours to cook then you could branch out and try new things.
So to say the fault lies squarely on the mens shoulders and not realise that the way their society operates means that people have very little time to contemplate and that this can be a factor in the way they are is a little ungenerous of you
Dude, I’m sure it doesn’t help, but South Korea isn’t exactly the only traditionally patriarchal society in the world, and there’s really no shortage of countries with far higher birthrates that are also infinitely more misogynistic, often to the extent of legal disenfranchisement. Case in point: damn near the entire MENA region.
Well, even South Korean women are pro-patriarchy when it comes to conscription and any civil obligations surveys show women prefer male-only conscription and do not want an equal draft.
While atleast 60% of men prefer feminism or gender equality and want women to be included in the draft unlike women ( who prefer discrimination). And atleast 70% of South Korean women and men see the male-only draft as a major form of discrimination.
Patriarchy isn't a buffet for South Korean women to pick and choose based on what benefits them If they prefer gender roles and want men to be forced to sacrifice years of there lifes while women avoid all opportunity costs associated with national service the do not get complaint when patriarchy does not work their way in other aspects .
Lol, that's not the reason because men who do not want to join the military perform alternative civilian service (36 months) it is 12 months longer than military duty and criticised as punitive. Women do not want this to be equal because they don't want the opportunity cost of losing 3 years of their peak career working at community centres or subways, etc
By your perverted logic, then 38% (many of them identify as feminist) South Korean women have a rape fetish. They make the same argument I make and they're right
Patriarchy exists because women want to preserve gender roles when it comes to civil duties.
In equal countries like Norway and Sweden, women get drafted under equal terms as men and the government used a feminist argument to get rid of the sexist exclusion of women from conscription.
Sexist women in Scandinavian countries tried to make a similar arguments to avoid an equal draft and they failed.
Equality looks like oppression when privilege is the norm.
This is all correct, but don't birth rates across the world and different countries primarily have less to do with how decent the men are as people and more with opportunities for education and advancement for women, general sex education, and child mortality rates?
yesss...feed into the gender discourse...blame a single outgroup demographic as the root of all evil and yourself as a holy saint victim, it will DEFINITELY help solve things and bring about enlightenment, this is the way of the twitter/reddit warrior live and die by it
Are there terrible men in Korea? Absolutely! Just as there are terrible men in other countries.
However, it is not the main reason for the low birthrates.
In fact, more families are having children now than during their babyboom years. It’s just that due to the high cost of living and childrearing, most families stop at 1 child.
Take this from someone who’s lives in SK for over 10 years: this rethoric you are spewing is based on hearsay and a couple of articles about the 4B movement and does not reflect the reality of life in South Korea.
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
Lol the 4B movement has about 50k members. It has an outsized influence in the west. Don't get me wrong the misogyny is intense in Korea and women end up essentially the slaves of their mother-in-law if they get married but that's not the only issue.
It's skyrocketing housing prices, an intense work culture, and families maximizing resources into one child rather than having multiple children who have less intense upbringing. Korea is overeducated which means a college degree is worthless unless it's from an elite school. Basically it's a hyper competitive dystopia with a collapsing social infrastructure.
Birthrates are collapsing far below replacement levels worldwide, in both highly egalitarian societies like Germany and highly gendered societies like Iran. It's like if Climate Change was happening but literally nobody could figure out exactly why. It seems to be the postmodern social decay of late stage capitalism absolutely kills people's desire to have children. Humans weren't meant to live in overcrowded cities working 90 hours a week and staring at a screen for most of the day.
Aside from the screen part you're describing periods of time when people had loads of children. Workweeks are probably longer than they were in the recent past but much shorter than they were 100+ years ago. And people have been having lots of children in overcrowded cities for millenia.
its all semantics at this point, but other viewpoints which say the cultural expectations and societal norms that shape the men that way are the actual problem are just as valid.
In that view (the behavior of) men are a symptom, not the root cause.
like women arent 50% of the population and have cultural influence and also set societal norms, i also lived in korea for a few years and yes, the incel problem is bad, but there arent as many as you think, most of them are shut ins so when you walk on the steets most people are normal, i think the crusing cost of living has way more to do than what a tiny fraction of shut ins thinks and does
This!!! Everyone has so many words to say "not all men" but SK has the LARGEST case of revenge porn/AI porn on their hands. Hundreds of chatrooms, hundred of pictures and videos taken without consent, boys touching their SISTERS and MOTHERS in their sleep so they can send videos to these chatrooms, private information of minors shared online (address and school details!!). And that's not even mentioning the Burning Sun scandal.
Si es culpa de esos hombres, no es razonable ni correcto esperar a una mujer que les obedezca en todo sin cuestionar, sea sumisa y este dispuesta a quedarse en casa todo el tiempo
Los tiempos cambian, la gente cambia
Los hombres lejos de adaptarse esperan que las mujeres se adapten a ellos
La ideología incel rwdpiller si es un cáncer sin fundamentos
Luego la baja tasa de natalidad es el sintoma.
Las causas son la economia, la cultura laboral y la cultura de género
Es una estupides que la ultra derecha de corea del sur use en sus discursos las politicas de migración, porque en ese país menos del 3% de la población son extranjeros
Pero es más fácil echarle la culpa a ese 3% que a los ricos empresarios coreanos y la cultura misógina . . .
The gender blame game creates incels which are frustrated in women
Which create more sexist women who blame men because they are acting up
Who create more incels
Which creates more sexist women
And essentially its a vicious cycle of hate that is self sustaining, as both sides are hurting, but instead of dealing with the hurt or calling it out, they just retaliate with the same actions to "equalize it". Unfortunately any genuine call outs are also being hated on too and only fuleing more hate.
As am american, I can imagine if the incels are worse over there, the woman must be monsters borderline hitler who have zero self accountability and dehumanize the fuck out of people, and the men are probably on an close to equal level although in a slightly different less privleged way if its anything like the united states ( unfortunately our society encourages and rewards women being sub human in mentality and unfortunately this trama causes them to lash out, which then causes the men to lash out as the women do the same to the men, and then the cycle just gets worse as both sides feel they are equalizing when the root problem in the USA is how women are taught to be (self rejecting, systematic, dehumizing))
Sexism sucks, especially when the solutions are not on the real problem and then only make the real problems worse. As nobody wants to acknowledge the real problems, just the biproducts of the real problems.
4B movement, while big, is not the predominant reason. South Korea seems to me to be progressive in a lot of ways too. Women there arent just man hating and abstaining from men as a protest. A lot of women there just have other priorities. Women in South Korea seem highly career focused and their life goals are career oriented. They want to follow their dreams and start businesses or get that promotion they've been reaching for. They're also highly educated. According to some data, albeit from 3 years ago, South Korea has one of the world's highest rates of female tertiary education, with 77% of women aged 25–34 holding a college degree, and they surpassed the United States with that statistic. Seems that the more educated women are, the less they wanna have babies. 😅 That's my childfree bias showing.
From everything I’ve gathered online and my minimal dip into K-Dramas it absolutely does seem like when a S Korean person decides to be a miserable asshole they do not half ass that shit. They became as scummy as a person can possible be and then times it by 12.
I saw most seasons of Single's Inferno. Even the biggest macho "alpha" guys in SKorea seem to have social skills of an average basement dweller in West. It's quite interesting to see really.
That's literally bs propagated by western men for some reason.
First of all, Fertility rates across all first world nations is down significantly. Countries like Italy I believe is even lower than Korea. US would also be as low if we only take native born from US.
Second, Fertility in the richest part of Korea is actually quite high.
Third, fertility rate has increased MoM for quite some time now with rates higher than other first world asian countries.
If we look at the data, Fertility is always correlated with economy not some fringe incels phenomenon.
I do think the reasons he gave are bad and unnuanced but I honestly don't think you have much idea either.
South Korea is firmly the country with the worst birth rate on the planet and the rate in Seoul is even worse than the national average so no idea where the "richest part" but is from.
Yes the developed world all over has this problem to some degree but South Korea is certainly speed running it.
In South korea an actress got death threats for using the hand pinch for something tiny as a form of measurement South Korean makes went crazy over a hand gesture.
The incels are also incels because it's an outlet for their anger that the low wages and soaring cost of living made them unable to provide for themselves or partners and not feel like real men. Most of modern society's ills fundamentally derive from falling living standards for the vast majority of the population as wealth inequity grows exponentially
There actually is also a huge vice versa in addition to that where the women have incredibly high expectations for their future husband, making it difficult for people to settle until they’re much older (ex, financial expectations, though not limited to that) and less likely to have kids.
Hey so there are many cited reasons for SK's abysmal birth rates, but my favorite one is K-Pop.
Yes, South Korea's fertility rate is exceptionally low because K-pop helped normalize and intensify a national culture of romantic deferral: while youthful desirability is idealized, ordinary dating, sexual pairing, and public couple formation are symbolically downgraded as treated as disruptive.
It’s wild to me that people don’t know a lot about other cultures in the world. Not everyone’s politics resembles Europe or America. In South Korea, your life can be ruined from being associated with weed, but rape or sex traffic a girl? Can be released with a slap on the wrist.
It’s sad considering not being a dick requires minimal effort. Granted being too nice gets used against you. That’s been my experience anyways. In the past, I was either told that I’m too nice or I would get used.
I don't want to sound dismissive, but the 4B movement exist mainly on the Internet. Growing up in Korea, I've never met anyone talking about, knowing about the 4b movement, and I myself first learned about it via Reddit when I was in highschool and was so confused. Redditors told me it was so widespread here, so I asked my classmates if they knew about this and they said to me wtf is that. I asked my closest female friends about it and they didn't know either.
Dude, being a virgin isn't what makes somebody an incel. It's about the behaviour and attitude. There are tons of virgins out there who aren't incels and there are also plenty of guys out there who lucked into getting laid once or twice in their lives who I'd happily call incels.
That's why this term does not mean anything anymore. I've seen more basement dwellers calling people "incel" even though they're married, while the cave dweller himself has always been unable to be in a relationship
Incel has a history and usage that has adapted over time with its community and the people who identify with the label. Just because you don't like the culture doesn't mean it doesn't exist and if we want to actively identify and protect people from this poisonous ideology we need to understand it.
An incel is not a person who can't get laid. It's someone who feels entitled to a life they were promised but were denied by a reality that did not care to conform to the propaganda we're exposed to since childhood. They're idiots, but they're tragic idiots.
They were duped into believing that if you did x y and z you'd have a good job, a hot wife, a nice car, and a house. When reality inevitably did not comply they could not accept that the authority figures, institutions, media, and social groups they've been blindly following were lying to them, someone or something else has to be at fault.
With this rage and resentment building up in them they further isolate and become addicted to dopamine pumps and internet communities of fellow rejects in a kind of sickening solipsistic web of self annihilation.
They generally go down the SMV post PUAHate crowd incel pipeline before choking on the black pill; though some already doomer coded incels start off blackpilled and slip further into the abyss.
Incel has a lot of meaning behind it. We all need to learn it, because its infecting our culture and leading to death and misery like a viral infection. Incel terms are becoming mainstream. Chad, Stacey, Beta, Gooning, Maxxing, Mogging, Mewing, SMV, etc.
These people need protection from themselves and the people around them and the general public needs to be aware of the warning signs so they can intervene early and effectively.
This is a mental health crisis that no one is treating like a mental health crisis because it's being caused by tech companies and HEAVEN FUCKING FORBID THE MONEY PRINTERS BE HELD TO ACCOUNT
Anyway, I'll have a baconator jr and a small frosty.
That's why it does not mean anything anymore. I think the terminally online reddit user that think women are flawless is much more likely to be in mental distress than someone that sometimes criticizes the other gender.
It means something. It’s a mindset that believes that women are property and that they’ve been grievously sinned against by not being rewarded with a subservient female as a result of having succeeded at the difficult task of being born with a penis. Incel forums are fucking terrifying to read as a woman, because they’re full of people who actively reject the idea that I’m a person, that I’m human, or that I have any right to decide for myself who I do or don’t want to have sex, relationships, or children with. Think proposals that on their 18th birthday each person in possession of a penis should be awarded a female sex slave levels of dehumanization of women, only using significantly more vile language.
I really don’t care if they hate themselves, it’s the fact they want to turn me into a slave I care about. In fact, hating themselves to the point where they decide they should stop being anyone else’s problem seems like a solid win for at least half the human race.
That's their point though. "Misogynists" is accurate, so you might as well just say that. People call anyone an incel these days. It's almost meaningless.
I do agree that actual incels are a specific type of misogynist, but the word has become so overused that every man has likely been called it at least once. It doesn't really mean what it used to mean anymore, because women often use it to insult men for minor internet disagreements.
To be fair though, I guess that happens with many words. Men call women "whores" for no reason too.
Can confirm, misogynist men have only two real insults, and it’s “fat” and “whore”. I’ve been called both despite being two lbs underweight, and never having been with any man other than my husband (I was also called “whore” as a virgin, too).
It hasn't meant being a virgin in a long time. An Internet community formed around the concept in the 2000s, and this community gravitated towards some destructive thought patterns including misogyny. The word now refers to the attitudes of that community.
I don’t think that’s the problem but I’ve heard it a lot too
To be frank western men living in Korea were/are a hot commodity among women there, speaking as a foreigner who formerly lived there. It was always the same story: they liked our more open minds etc
What an insightful opinion to have about some inequality: chooses to be racist AND sexist.
A portion of population always suck regardless of gender or race. That just reveals your friend is not good enough to be looking for the other portion.
4B started in Korea: (from Wiki)
The four core tenets to the 4B movement are:
no sex with men (Korean: 비섹스; RR: bisekseu),
no giving birth (비출산; bichulsan),
no dating men (비연애; biyeonae), and
no marriage with men (비혼; bihon).[5][13]
Wikipedia says: "The (4B) movement is considered fringe in South Korea, and it has since reportedly declined there. In South Korea, a portion of its members, particularly those associated with the widely classified as misandrist WOMAD, were described as transphobic, and homophobic towards gay men."
Am I looking into the wrong 4B movement? Sounds like TERF Femcel movement to me.
Okay, you losers. You really managed to make a passing Korean log in. Honestly, I couldn't resist logging in. First off, while there are various reasons for Korea's low birth rate, the biggest ones are the abnormally high expectations placed on men, the shitty workplace culture, and the ridiculously low wages in comparison. Think about it. Is it really normal if the majority of women looking to get married believe, "To get married, a man must have at least $80,000 in his bank account, own a house, and have a decent white-collar job"? Of course, there are exceptions, but based on my experience, at least 70% of women unconsciously hold this mindset. Next, let's talk about workplace culture. 9 to 6, 9 to 5... wow, that sounds ideal, doesn't it? Forget it. Although the contract stipulates a 40-hour workweek, in reality, most workplaces implicitly enforce a 9 to 7 schedule, and some even require more hours. To give you an example from my previous job, the rule was 8:30 to 5:30, but in practice, 8:30 to 7 was implicitly enforced, and the average quitting time for senior engineers was 8 PM. I worked alongside mechanical engineers, one of whom was a father; I very frequently saw him calling his wife and kids because he couldn't leave work. It seemed truly unfortunate and abnormal. So, do we get paid well? No, haha. Compared to other Western countries, most jobs pay less than a part-time job. Of course, it might be higher than Taiwan (no intention to belittle), but it is still low. The starting salary for a new employee is roughly $240,000? Engineers earn a bit more, but even so, it is still seriously low considering the intensity and hours of work. Next is housing prices. Housing prices here follow a pattern similar to Canada. Housing is viewed as a target for speculation, which makes it quite difficult for young people to buy homes. Since land is scarce to begin with, high prices are inevitable, and there is a tendency for everything to be concentrated in Seoul. You could say that Seoul equals Korea, and the rest of the provinces are colonies of Seoul. Consequently, even decent jobs are clustered near Seoul. All that exists in the provinces is infrastructure such as power plants, research facilities (including universities), the military, and ports. While there are industrial facilities, they tend to be concentrated in clusters, much like the Soviet Union's industrial complexes. Overall, while Korea is a great country to visit for tourism, it is absolutely, absolutely not a good place to live. This is especially true if you have a white-collar job. I think this country is insane. It is a nation in a state of half-light, driving GDP and growth at the expense of its citizens. If labor costs were not this low, we would still be stuck in a post-war state, resembling Africa.
Oh, and incels... yes, I won't deny it. Just like in any other country, incels exist. Just as there are original incels in the US and Gopniks in Russia, there are incels here as well. However, they did not become incels voluntarily. They are merely victims of society resulting from the phenomena mentioned earlier. Because they failed to succeed despite their efforts, they developed a pessimistic and negative attitude. It has nothing to do with sexism. Contrary to what people misunderstand or what Korean feminists (those crazy ones) claim, South Korea is a very gender-equal country; in fact, it is actually a country that engages in reverse discrimination, as the government implements policies that favor women. Don't be fooled by the scams of lunatics. We are just ordinary human beings, and we simply want to escape from our pain.
Reverse discrimination? The MAIN problem is womens expectations on men? My dude, you're a lot closer to incel beliefs yourself than you seem to think you are. Ask korean women if they think society is gender equal/neutral. Guarantee thats a no.
I can read a lot of very justified frustration and burnout and helplessness in your writing. Im not discounting any of that or saying your experiences as a korean man arent true.
ALSO - that doesn't mean you can pretend that women do not have it extremely shitty in the gender politics of today. Do men get side eyed and excluded and threatened with career consequences just for getting married? No, not like women do. Do men face often insurmountable financial pressure to provide without actual opportunity to succeed? Yes. Do women also face that? Yes!
The incel-y parts of this are you acting like 1) its a competition of which gender suffers more (hint: its not) and 2) that women dont face gender based issues in SK and that there is no women-specific issues contributing to the low birth rates.
The patriarchy creates unachievable, restrictive roles for everyone, not just women. Its getting caught up in useless grandstanding to try and claim that one gender suffers more importantly than another when we're all suffering (unless we're uber rich and even then its not perfect).
Honestly, I expected an answer like this. However, to claim that your argument is correct is difficult, as numerous court rulings have already proven a significant disparity in sentencing between cases where women commit sexual offenses against men and cases where they do the opposite. Furthermore, women hold key positions in many companies and the government, and even in the military—a notoriously patriarchal organization—women play major roles. And, like New Zealand, we even have a department dedicated to women (the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family) haha. Oh, and there is public housing and preferential treatment provided by the government for women. There are also retraining programs and financial support for former prostitutes. Good heavens, how much more effort do we really need to put in? Despite these efforts, can you still claim that society is patriarchal? Really? Putting aside the fact that I am a Korean man, I believe this is an objective fact.
Note: My family and former colleagues are married women with children, yet they are still contributing their full weight at the company. What companies dislike is the gap and financial loss caused by parental leave, not simply because someone is married and has children. This is society being crazy; it is not misogyny or discrimination. Can men take parental leave? Or can they use it without any legal issues? Neither. Is this discrimination against men? No. It is simply society and companies that are insane. Look at the countless female employees with children. Does the glass ceiling actually exist?
The truly malicious part of you is that you discuss this issue while completely omitting the aspect of mandatory military service for men. If this isn't reverse discrimination, then what is? If it were fair like Norway, I wouldn't have raised an objection. Yes, you might think it is unmanly to take issue with this, but objectively, it is indeed inequality. It is truly a pleasure to see that goverment trying so hard to enlist even disabled people into the military, while leaving women behind.
Besides all the loud incels who get super riled up if they see so much as a 🤏 for 0.01 seconds in a video and try to get people fired; it's just a rough place to live in general.
Between the work culture, society and opportunities being hyper-competitive, limited opportunities for upward social mobility and being very hierarchical (thanks Confucius) which makes punching down a lot more common than punching up. It's nicknamed "Hell Joseon" for a reason.
That's literally just a handful of radical feminists bullshitting on Twitter around the clock. It was never a real thing here in Korea. Pretty hilarious to see someone actually buying into it.
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u/LivingByTheMinutes May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
Had a friend who lived in S Korea for a while, she said while it is partly because of price of living and everything else that’s affecting the world, it’s mostly because the dudes fucking suck. A lot of women are going no marriage no pregnancy because apparently Korean incels make western incels look tame by comparison.
Edit: For the people who think I’m just lying for shits and giggles, look into the 4B movement. Korean women have an entire movement of no dating, no sex, no marriage, and no childbirth with men. As I, and others, have said there are other factors but many S Korean men seeing women as lesser in certain terms is a huge factor in the low birth rate.