• The “Four Nos” are no dating, no sex, no marriage, and no child-rearing, according to the movement
• Marriage rates are plummeting in South Korea, where wives are often expected to work, raise children, and care for ageing in-laws with little help

“I’m a straight woman who is no longer interested in having relationships with men,” says Bonnie Lee.
She doesn’t care about finding a boyfriend or a fairy tale wedding, and will decide her own happily ever after. And she is not alone.
A growing number of South Korean women are banding together to reject rigid patriarchal norms and vowing never to wed, have children or even date and have sex.
“I’ve always felt that as a woman there are more disadvantages than advantages to being married,” says Lee, a 40-something professional who lives with her dog near Seoul.
Now she has gone even further embracing the nation’s radical feminist movement “4B” or the “Four Nos”: no dating, no sex, no marriage, and no child-rearing.
Marriage rates are plummeting in South Korea where wives are often expected to work, raise children, and care for ageing in-laws with little state or community help.
“In the marriage market, your previous life and work experience don’t matter,” explains Lee, who has two masters degrees. “For some ridiculous reason, being highly educated also becomes a minus point. What matters the most as a potential wife is whether or not you are capable of caring for your husband and in-laws.”
She has witnessed well educated friends hitting barriers at work and experiencing problems at home after having children.
Such difficulties are the subject of a recent hit film, Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 . Based on a controversial feminist novel, it centres on a married South Korean woman who has quit her job and struggles to raise her child with limited support. Women viewers rated the film an average 9.5 out of 10 stars on the South’s top search engine. Men gave it 2.8.
A growing number of women are turning their backs on the traditional expectations of South Korea’s male-dominated society, where working wives spend four times longer on domestic chores than their husbands.
A decade ago almost 47 per cent of single and never-married Korean women said they thought marriage was necessary. Last year, that fell to 22.4 per cent, while the number of couples getting hitched slumped to 257,600 – down from 434,900 in 1996.
There is no official data on the size of the 4B movement, but its members say it has at least 4,000 followers.
Meanwhile a separate feminist YouTube channel that features boycotting marriage and child rearing has more than 100,000 subscribers.
Lee has also adopted some tenets of “Escape the Corset”, a movement against South Korea’s strict beauty standards – some adherents have shared viral videos of themselves smashing up their make-up collections.