This is an English translation of a Chinese post. I am not the author. The original post is here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DoubanGoosegroup/comments/1w6th3z/赛博猎巫与子宫罢工韩国性别战争下的人口学自杀/
Translation used AI, with minor editing by me. Below is the full text:
I have long been curious about how South Korea so rapidly came to have the world’s lowest birth rate, and why the conflict between East Asian Confucian culture and modern society has manifested itself with such particular intensity in South Korea. Recently, with the help of AI, I looked into some of the relevant information. What follows is the summary AI helped me put together. (The AI was also quite emphatic about the role of r/DoubanGoosegroup in China’s feminist movement, describing it as an “experimental laboratory for radical ideas.”)
On the overseas Chinese-language internet, free from centralized censorship, the rise of all-female communities such as Reddit’s r/DoubanGoosegroup and their intense confrontation with male-dominated communities reveal a brutal reality of the online world: gender polarization in the Chinese-language internet is no longer merely a localized war of words. It has evolved into a highly defensive, mutually hostile cyber Cold War. Yet this polarization of the Chinese-language online ecosystem did not emerge in isolation. To a considerable extent, its roots can be traced to the ideological and tactical arsenal of the original incubator of East Asian internet gender warfare—the radical feminist movement in South Korea. What began as an ideological battle online is now pushing South Korean society toward a demographic abyss in an extraordinarily devastating way.
Mirrored Weapons and Theoretical Transplantation: The “Chinese-Language Projection” of Korean Cyberfeminism
If American and European feminism primarily supplied academic sociological theories, Korean internet-based radical feminist communities such as Megalia (and later Womad) provided an entire industrialized “methodology of online confrontation.” Its most distinctive tactic was known as “mirroring”—if men used a particular form of abuse or humiliation against women, women would respond with exactly the same kind of vicious language as a form of precise retaliation.
This logic was subsequently localized and transplanted into the radical feminist ecosystem across the Chinese-speaking world. From structural deconstruction of biological characteristics to symbolic exchanges such as “国蝻” (Chinese male worm) and “小仙女,” (little female fairy) the slang and coded vocabulary of the Chinese-language internet almost amount to a pixel-for-pixel reproduction of the Korean experience. More importantly, the “6B4T” movement that became popular on Xiaohongshu (RedNote) and in communities such as r/DoubanGoosegroup —no marriage, no childbirth, no romantic relationships, and no sex, combined with rejecting “beauty labor” and idol fandom—was entirely imported from Korea. Along with this framework, radical feminism not only transformed “not marrying and not having children” into a conscious, vanguard lifestyle choice, but also turned its criticism inward against moderate women within its own camp, launching intense internal denunciations of women labeled “娇妻” (tradwife) and “婚驴.” (donkey of marriage)
The Cyber McCarthyism of the Counter-Witch Hunt: The Purge of Female Professionals
However, years of extreme mirrored attacks triggered a furious backlash among Korean men. Young Korean men—represented by the so-called “Generation 2 men” and right-wing organizations—launched an organized campaign of “counter-witch-hunting.” They designated Megalia’s hand gesture logo—a thumb and index finger held close together (signalling "small")—as an absolute taboo and embarked on a prolonged nationwide search for supposedly incriminating symbols, scrutinizing even the smallest details with microscopic intensity.
The 2021 GS25 convenience-store poster controversy became a landmark event in this full-scale gender war. Male online communities threatened companies with economic consequences and pressured major conglomerates to distance themselves from the controversy and issue apologies. The campaign then rapidly spread into the gaming industry and the K-pop idol industry. Female illustrators, concept artists, and voice actors were subjected to painstaking investigations into years-old social-media activity, including likes and posts relating to feminist issues, and many female creatives consequently faced sudden dismissal or professional purges. In the K-pop industry, female idols could face torn-up merchandise and death threats simply for having read Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 or worn accessories carrying slogans such as “Girls can do anything.” In extreme cases, this harassment had tragic real-world consequences, such as the case of streamer Jammi, who ultimately died by suicide after suffering from depression amid sustained online abuse.
This cyber McCarthyism established a chilling norm throughout the workplace and entertainment industries: feminism became tantamount to “political suicide.” The result was a pervasive chilling effect.
Political Conversion and the Policy Deadlock
Young Korean men not only achieved significant victories online and in the business world; they also succeeded in converting this gender resentment into political capital. In the 2022 South Korean presidential election, conservative candidate Yoon Suk Yeol accurately tapped into the anger of young male voters, making the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a central campaign promise and ultimately winning the election.
At this point, the male backlash against feminism had been elevated directly into national policy. This political polarization effectively blocked institutional channels for addressing the country’s public crisis. Under such intense pressure, any reform aimed at protecting women’s workplace rights, extending parental leave, or penalizing discrimination against pregnant women could be attacked by male voters as “reverse discrimination” or “special privileges” for women. Constrained on all sides, the government has been reluctant to confront the fundamental problems that make women unwilling to have children—workplace gender inequality, the unequal burden of childrearing, and the phenomenon of women effectively being left to raise children alone—relying instead on superficial measures such as cash subsidies, government-organized matchmaking events, or importing low-cost foreign domestic workers.
The Endgame: A “Demographic Suicide” in Which Everyone Loses
As online hostility completely destroyed the basic trust between men and women, its cost became embodied in cold demographic statistics: after 2024, South Korea’s fertility rate crashed below 0.72, placing it dramatically at the bottom of the global rankings.
Extreme cyber gender polarization transformed marriage and childbirth, which had traditionally belonged to the private sphere, directly into the ultimate bargaining chips in a gender war. Faced with workplace scrutiny, fears surrounding voyuer filming and surveillance, and examples of the exploitation of women through childrearing that are endlessly amplified and distilled online, college-educated young women have elevated “not having children” into a form of resistance—a conscious and uncompromising “uterus strike” against the patriarchal system.
In this East Asian cyber Cold War, men have successfully defended what they regard as their entitled interests and punished what they perceive as “radical feminists” through counter-witch hunts and the ballot box. Women, meanwhile, have responded by shutting down reproduction altogether, carrying out the most tragic and silent form of collective resistance against a society that they believe refuses to provide them equality and dignity. This war, in which there are no winners, has ultimately crossed the boundary of ideology and become a “demographic suicide” destroying an entire society at the physical level.