“My womb cannot give birth to the knife that will one day stab me.”
Over the past couple of years, this line has spread widely across China’s social media. It is almost always presented as something “Hannü” (韩女, literally “Korean women” in Chinese).
Whether the quote actually originated in South Korea – or how widely it is known there – is impossible to verify. Yet its factual origins have become almost beside the point. The quote resonates with many Chinese feminist internet users because it expresses a radical refusal of motherhood in response to male violence. Rather than risk giving birth to a future perpetrator, better not to give birth at all. On Chinese social media, it has even been cited as an explanation for South Korea’s ultra-low birth rate.
The quote is provocative, unsettling, and memorable. It also fits neatly into the highly polarized gender discourse that dominates much of China’s online space. That is precisely why it has been embraced as a kind of iconic slogan.
But how many South Korean women actually hold this view? No reliable data can answer that question. And how many Chinese people have had enough direct contact with South Korean women to know whether such statements are actually common? Probably very few.
As more and more such quotes and stories – whether verified or not – circulate online, Hannü has gradually ceased to mean South Korean women in the literal sense. It has become a symbolic figure onto which many Chinese women project another possible version of themselves.
Why Not American or European Women?
If Chinese women are looking abroad for feminist inspiration, there is no shortage of historical examples in the West. Women in New Zealand were the first to win the right to vote in nationwide elections. Feminists in Europe and North America challenged long-standing social norms, from what women could wear to whether they could control their own bodies. Throughout the 20th century, activists in countries such as France, Britain, and the United States campaigned for reproductive rights, workplace equality, and legal reform. They wrote manifestos, organized protests, entered politics, and helped reshape the societies they lived in.
Yet on China’s social media, the figure most often celebrated as a particular “state of mind” is neither American women nor French women. It is Hannü.
Although many feminist ideas first entered the Chinese-speaking world through Western scholarship and activism, Western women often feel distant to many Chinese readers. Their societies are shaped by different political institutions, religious traditions, racial dynamics, and histories of social movements. Their struggles are admired, but they can also seem to belong to a different world.
South Korea, by contrast, feels familiar. Both China and South Korea are East Asian societies influenced by Confucian family values. Both place heavy expectations on marriage, childbirth, education, workplace hierarchy, and women’s appearance. Chinese internet users often joke that East Asia’s three major societies (China, Japan, South Korea) are “holding hands together” – bound by similar pressures and anxieties.
As a result, many Chinese women do not see South Korean women as distant pioneers. They see women living in a social structure that looks remarkably similar to their own – women who appear more willing to express anger, refuse compromise, and say “no” out loud. That is where Hannü draws its appeal. Not because South Korea has solved gender inequality, and not because South Korean women necessarily enjoy greater freedom, but because their frustrations feel immediately recognizable.
Many Chinese women see in Hannü not simply “South Korean women,” but another possible version of themselves. Only a sufficiently similar “other” can become a source of inspiration.
Why Not Chinese Women?
If Hannü has become such a powerful symbol on China’s internet, an obvious question follows: why aren’t Chinese women taking full ownership of these sentiments for themselves? Why the need to attribute the posts to a foreign source at all?
The answer is complicated, but part of it lies in the particular environment of China’s online discourse. China’s internet operates within a set of rules that are often unwritten but widely understood. Discussions of gender – especially those framed as direct confrontation between men and women – can attract complaints, moderation, or removal. This reflects both the Chinese government’s long-standing emphasis on maintaining a “harmonious” online environment and a broader political sensitivity toward public debates over gender at a time of persistently low birth rates.
Under these conditions, many Chinese women have found that expressing anger indirectly can be easier than expressing it openly. Rather than speaking only in their own voice, they often borrow someone else’s. That is where Hannü becomes useful. By using words supposedly spoken by “South Korean women,” Chinese women are able to express anger toward their own social realities while reducing the risk of official censorship or social backlash.
There is a concept in sociology known as “vicarious experience”: people develop an understanding of their own possibilities by observing the actions of others and the consequences that follow. Rather than relying solely on direct personal experience, they learn indirectly through the experiences of people they perceive as similar to themselves. In today’s hyperconnected media environment, Chinese internet users are constantly exposed to stories from South Korea: the 4B movement, which rejects dating, marriage, childbirth, and heterosexual relationships with men; the Nth Room case; and recurring public debates over sexual violence and the punishment of sex offenders.
Such stories easily create an intuitive impression in Chinese women: “this could be us” – or perhaps “this is simply a society much like ours that has encountered these problems earlier.” Through this process of vicarious experience, emotions such as anger, sympathy, fear, identification, and even admiration are amplified.
Once Hannü became an internet label, it gradually drifted away from South Korea – and away from real Korean women. It no longer refers to South Korean women themselves, but to a language collectively borrowed by those on China’s internet who cannot always express their anger directly.
In this sense, the much-discussed Hannü is not actually Korean at all. She is a stand-in created by the Chinese internet.
