By Beh Lih Yi
SEOUL, Jan 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – No dating, no sex, no marriage and no babies: two South Korean YouTubers who vow to stay single have caused uproar in the east Asian nation as it battles the world’s lowest fertility rate.
The duo have gained celebrity status for their SOLOdarity channel – with some 37,000 followers in its first year – where they have compared marriage to slavery for women and criticised the tradition of fathers giving away brides as offensive.
“Marriage is the root cause of patriarchy in South Korea,” said Jung Se-young, co-host of the channel’s talk show, which is popular with young women who do not want to wed and become saddled with childcare and domestic chores like their mothers.
The pair’s “No Marriage” movement has tapped into burgeoning feminism in South Korea, which saw tens of thousands of women protest in 2018 against a epidemic of voyeurism or “spycam porn” – where victims are secretly filmed urinating or mid-sex.
Deemed radical by their critics, the two women in their 30s have faced online bullying for their campaign, sometimes dubbed a “womb protest”, as women’s growing rejection of marriage and motherhood splits South Korean society.
On SOLOdarity, Jung and her co-host Baeck Ha-na, an accountant, dish out advice to women on why they should stay single, as well as touching on other feminist topics that challenge South Korean women’s traditional backseat role.
“It is about boycotting marriage, men, sex and relationships,” Jung, a teacher, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in the capital Seoul.
Both women said their previous relationships brought them down and they had changed their appearance to please boyfriends – Jung said she even underwent minor plastic surgery.
