Birke

C'Mon, You Know You Wanna...

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"So yeah, for well over a decade, the discourse  around low birth rates and demographic crisis has  treated as a major issue in the media. But in  the Korean press, this population crisis usually framed through issues like extreme competition  among young people, economic insecurity,  shigh private education costs, and long working hours. They are all right, but in other words, the domino narrative is that young people cannot  afford to have children even if they want to, because they cannot find stable jobs or earn  enough money, but in fact, that is a very male-centered perspective. And under patriarchy,  men are still expected to be breadwinners who earn enough to have a household and provide financial  stability.

So this narrative is really expressing male anxiety, that it has become harder for them  to fulfill that role and build a family. For women though, the more fundamental issue is often not  just money, it is the fear that marriage and childbirth will derail their lives and destroy the  work and stability they have built for themselves. But that side of the story is often overlooked in  both media coverage and political discussion. In fact, as more women have entered higher education  and the workforce, there has also been a growing  resentment toward women's economic independence  with some people suggesting that women's social advancement has made it harder for men to find jobs and become household heads.  

And when the media covers women who do not  give birth, it almost always portrays them as women who just desperately want children, but are  unable to have them for various reasons. And the idea that some women simply do not want children  in the first place is rarely acknowledged. And that is one reason the 4B movement is almost never  taken up as a serious agenda in mainstream media, especially in the major outlet. And a woman  who does not want marriage, childbirth, or even a male partner is treated in a Korean society almost like an alien or a herotic. And the media seems to think that even giving  such women visibility might influence other women who are still seen as so-called desirable  or normal by Korean society.

So the favored choice is to deny them a platform altogether.  And this is not dramatically different even in media that are considered progressive, and  that's another interesting part. Some people even argue that because Korea as a whole remains  so conservative, what passes as progressive here is still far less progressive than what that  word would imply in many Western contexts. So even progressive media and progressive political  parties do not take a particularly critical stance towards patriarchy itself.

So issues like the 4B  movement are simply never adopted as part of the agenda. And one last thing I want to say is there is a thing that the real power of the media lies not only in what it covers, but in what it chooses  not to cover, I think that explains very well how political that silence can be. And to me, this  deliberate and thorough indifference toward 4B women is one of the clearest expressions  of the mood of mainstream Korean society."