Feminist Refusal and the Limits of Gender Equality in South Korea: The 4B Movement
No bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae or biseksu … Unsplash
The legal framework of South Korea demonstrates a formal commitment to gender equality, enshrined in acts such as the Framework Act on Gender Equality.[1] However, this alleged progress conceals a concerning legal issue where equality law perceives gender as differences rather than domination, ultimately requiring women to prove discrimination by demonstrating sameness with men.[2] MacKinnon argues that this doctrinal contradiction enables entrenched forms of inequality and thus, imbalance remains legally visible.[3] In response to South Korea’s inaction of substantive gender equality reformation, the 4B Movement was created, seeking to reject traditional heteronormative expectations placed upon women.[4] Although the movement is anti-institutionalist, it establishes a challenge to the masculine “way of life” embedded in law and its worldview, vocabulary, and subjectivity.[5]
South Korea’s gender equality regime comprises a suite of laws, including the Framework Act on Gender Equality,[6] the Gender Impact Assessment Act,[7] and the Equal Employment Opportunity and Work–Family Balance Assistance Act.[8] These laws adopt the language of equality but operate through procedural mechanisms (audits, assessments, policy reviews, etc.) with no legal enforceability or accountability governance. Notably, key provisions lack enforceability, such as Article 7 of the Framework Act, which mandates the government to develop and implement equality policies.[9]
The Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) system exemplifies this proceduralism. Though intended to promote substantive equality through the creation or revision of gender equality laws and policies, [10] GIAs function is largely symbolic and audits with no legal obligation to revise discriminatory laws or policies. This reflects institutional feminism’s preference for performance rather than transformation. Therefore, it can be argued that gender equality laws diverge into two different paths including neutrality or special protection. Each path challenges the male norm, which ultimately created the aforementioned laws.[11]
South Korea remains implicitly heteronormative and reproductive. Family and workplace equality laws presume female roles to be centred around marriage, caregiving, and childrearing. Policies on maternity leave, career-interruption support, and work-family balance implicitly assign women roles in biological and social reproduction.[12]
The 4B Movement or “the Four Nos” derives its name from the Korean homophone bi, which translates to ‘no’ . This manifests the four core principles of the movement as bihon (no marriage), bichulsan (no childbirth), biyeonae (no dating) and biseksu (no sex).[13] Rather than seeking inclusion on unequal terms, the 4B Movement withholds participation, refusing the state’s reproductive contract and disrupting the social script that binds womanhood to marriage, fertility, and caregiving. The nation’s demographic policies treat women as reproductive assets in a national project of population management and therefore these reproductive expectations are not optional but are legally compulsory for women. The 4B Movement’s refusal in itself is a critique of this system.[14]
While the 4B Movement’s lifestyle rejection may appear to function outside of the law, its refusal acts as a jurisprudential intervention. Rather than demanding more inclusive policies, the movement challenges the premise that legal personhood must be earned through conformity to relational and familial traditions. Feminist lawmaking often does not occur through formal institutions but through acts of recognition. Collective experiences of harm are named, legitimised and politicised.[15] In bypassing traditional legal avenues, the movement performs what Naffine calls a feminist “reimagination of legal agency”, articulating new forms of subjectivity that are not grounded in male-coded ideals of independence or productivity.[16]
The inability of anti-discrimination law to engage with collective, normalised inequality further explains this turn to refusal.[17] When inequality is structurally embedded, courts fail to recognise it as abnormal or remediable.[18] Rather than litigate exceptionalism, 4B asserts the ordinariness of injustice and declines to validate a legal system that cannot conceive it. In this way, the movement exposes the law’s limits and contributes to a broader feminist jurisprudence of negation, resistance, and withdrawal.
The 4B Movement reveals the limits of South Korea’s procedural approach to gender equality, challenging the law’s failure to confront the structural nature of women’s subordination. Its refusal constitutes a feminist legal intervention with enduring implications. It demands that legal systems recognise autonomy, care, and non-participation as valid forms of legal agency. By exposing the exclusionary foundations of equality law, the 4B Movement compels a reimagining of justice, one that moves beyond symbolic inclusion toward structural transformation.
Edited by Ariana Nariman
[1] Framework Act on Gender Equality (Republic of Korea) Act No 10257, 27 April 2010, as amended by Act No 17896, 12 January 2021.
[2] Catharine A MacKinnon, Sex Equality (Foundation Press, 2nd ed, 2007) 233, 235; Catharine A MacKinnon, ‘Creating International Law: Gender as Leading Edge’ in Doris Buss and Ambreena Manji (eds), International Law: Modern Feminist Approaches (Hart Publishing, 2005) 105.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Jieun Lee and Euisol Jeong, ‘The 4B Movement: Envisioning a Feminist Future with/in a Non-Reproductive Future in Korea’ (2021) 30(5) Journal of Gender Studies 633.
[5] Ngaire Naffine, ‘In Praise of Legal Feminism’ (2006) 26(1) Legal Studies 71, 74.
[6] Framework Act (n 1)
[7] Gender Impact Assessment Act (Republic of Korea) Act No 15545, 27 March 2018.
[8] Equal Employment Opportunity and Work–Family Balance Assistance Act (Republic of Korea) Act No 8781, 21 December 2007, as amended by Act No 20521, 22 October 2024.
[9] Framework Act (n 1) art 7.
[10] GIA (n 7) arts 1-2.
[11] MacKinnon (n 2) 237.
[12] Equal Employment Opportunity and Work–Family Balance Assistance Act (n 8) 18–19.
[13] Jieun Kim, ‘“A Woman Is Not a Baby-Making Machine”: A Brief History of South Korea’s 4B Movement and Why It’s Making Waves in America’ (10 May 2024) The Conversation https://theconversation.com/a-woman-is-not-a-baby-making-machine-a-brief-history-of-south-koreas-4b-movement-and-why-its-making-waves-in-america-243355.
[14] Kim (n 13).
[15] Catharine A MacKinnon, ‘Creating International Law: Gender as Leading Edge’ in Doris Buss and Ambreena Manji (eds), International Law: Modern Feminist Approaches (Hart Publishing, 2005) 106.
[16] Ngaire Naffine, ‘In Praise of Legal Feminism’ (2006) 26(1) Legal Studies 71, 76.
[17] Lee and Jeong (n 4) 640.
[18] Nicola Lacey, ‘From Individual to Group? A Feminist Analysis of the Limits of Anti-Discrimination Legislation’ in Nicola Lacey (ed), Unspeakable Subjects: Feminist Essays in Legal and Political Theory (Hart Publishing, 1998) 23.