"I saw with my own eyes how married women are treated and discriminated against, so I decided marriage does not help women at all." agrees Jung Se-Young. "There are many things I want to do in life that you can't do if you get married," she said. The 26-year-old, who lives in a provincial city in South Korea, is unmarried and childless - and plans to keep it that way.
"Aren't you lonely?" This is a question student Moensan is used to being asked. Change comes slowly, MinYoung says with bitter conviction, recounting a recent example of a woman who was fired from a part-time café job for cutting her hair short. With a job interview coming up, she's considering growing her hair out. "When I become a mother, in Korean society, I have to give up one thing: career or baby." Sohee isn't ready to give up her career just yet, with ambitions to one day become a lawyer. "Many of my friends are doing no relationship … I don't like getting into relationships with men sometimes," she says. "No sex, no sexual romantic relationship, no marriage, no birth." MinYoung says having children is also a distant blip on her future horizon. "There are four movements promoted by women in their 20s in Korea," Professor NaYoung Lee explains.
Growing numbers of South Korean women are turning their backs on marriage and children the country's fertility rate fell to world-wide record low in 2019 (at one child per woman).
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