It was late at night, and Darim’s animation studio had just finished designing a new look for a character in one of South Korea’s most popular video games, MapleStory.

Darim was proud of her work. So, sitting alone on the floor of her small studio apartment, she posted the trailer on social media. Almost immediately, she was flooded with thousands of abusive messages, including death and rape threats.

Young male gamers had taken issue with a single frame in the trailer, in which the female character could be seen holding her thumb and forefinger close together.

They thought it resembled a hand gesture used by a radical online feminist community almost a decade ago to poke fun at the size of Korean men’s penises.

“There were insults I’d never heard before, they were disgusting and inhumane,” said Darim, which is not her real name. One read: “You’ve just sabotaged your job.”

Messages then started piling into Darim’s studio and the game developer claiming she was a feminist and demanding she be fired. Within hours, the company pulled the promotional video.

Darim had become the latest victim in a series of vicious online witch hunts, in which men in South Korea attack women they suspect of having feminist views. They bombard them with abuse and try to get them sacked.

This is part of a growing backlash to feminism, in which feminists have been branded man-haters who deserve to be punished. The witch hunts are having a chilling effect on women, with many now scared to admit they are feminists.

This is forcing the movement underground, in a country where gender discrimination is still deeply entrenched. South Korea has the largest gender pay gap in the OECD, a group of the world’s rich countries.

The hunts are often spearheaded by young male video gamers, and target women who work in the industry, like Darim, though recently they have spread to other professions.

They look for anything that resembles what they term the ‘finger-pinching gesture’ and use it as proof that men-hating women are surreptitiously mocking them.

Once they spot a supposed sign, the hunt begins. “They decide that a dark, evil feminist is hiding in the company, and her life should be ruined,” explained Minsung Kim, a 22-year-old male gamer who, concerned by these witch hunts, set up an organisation to support the victims.

The witch hunters track down all female employees at the company in question, and trawl their social media accounts, searching for any evidence of feminism. Way back on Darim’s timeline, they found an ‘offending’ post.

Darim in fact had nothing to do with the disputed part of the animation, but her studio was rattled by the torrent of abuse – especially after Nexon, the gaming company, suddenly removed all the studio’s artwork from their roster and issued an apology to customers.

“My company and CEO were in a panic,” said Darim. “I thought I was going to be fired, and I’d never be able to work in animation again.”

Then Minsung’s organisation stepped in. They urged her studio to ignore the gamers and offered to pay Darim’s legal fees so she could report the abuse. “We said these demands will never end, you need to nip this in the bud now,” he said. The studio listened, and Darim kept her job.

But similar witch hunts have worked, in the gaming industry and beyond, and they are becoming more frequent. In one case, a young illustrator lost her job after a handful of disgruntled gamers stormed the company’s office demanding she be removed.

And it is not just Korean companies that have capitulated. Last year, the international car maker Renault suspended one of its female employees after she was accused of making the finger-pinching gesture while moving her hands in a promotional presentation.

“These anti-feminists are getting more organised; their playbook is getting more specific,” said Minsung. “By taking a hand gesture that everyone makes and turning it into a scarlet letter they can brand literally anyone an evil feminist,” he said.

Because the companies are folding to these baseless accusations, the instigators of these hunts have become emboldened, he said. “They are confident now that when you accuse someone of feminism, you can ruin their career.”

Minsung knows, because not long ago he was one of these men. He used to belong to the anti-feminist forums. “We are exposed to the uncensored internet unimaginably young,” he said, having joined the forums aged nine.

It was only when Minsung traded video games for playing real-life games, including Dungeons and Dragons, that he met women, and his views shifted. He became, in his words, an “ardent feminist”.

In South Korea, women commonly suffer discrimination and misogyny both at work and at home. But as they have fought to improve their rights, many young men have started to believe they are the ones being discriminated against.

The backlash began in the mid-2010s, following a surge of feminist activism. During this time, women took to the streets in protest at sexual violence and the widespread use of hidden cameras that secretly film women using toilets and changing rooms – around 5,000 to 6,000 cases are reported annually.

“Young men saw women becoming vocal and were threatened by their rise,” said Myungji Yang, a professor of sociology at the University of Hawai’i Manoa, who has interviewed dozens of young Korean men. “They learn about feminism from online forums, which carry the most radical caricature of feminists,” she said. “This has given them a distorted idea of what feminism is.”

One of their grievances is the 18-month military service men must complete. Once they leave the military they often “feel entitled” to a good job, said Hyun Mee Kim, a professor of cultural anthropology at Yonsei University in Seoul, who studies feminism.

As more women have entered the workforce, and jobs have become harder to get, some men feel their opportunities are being unfairly taken away.

These feelings have been validated by South Korea’s now disgraced and suspended President, Yoon Suk Yeol, who came to power in 2022 on an anti-feminist platform, claiming gender discrimination no longer existed, and has since tried to dismantle the government’s gender equality ministry.

More surprising than these views themselves, is that the men who hold them have such power over major companies.

I travelled to Pangyo, the Silicon Valley of South Korea, to meet a woman who has worked in the gaming industry for 20 years. After Darim’s case, her company started to edit all its games, removing the fingers from characters’ hands, turning them into fists, to avoid complaints.

“It’s exhausting and frustrating” to work like this, she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The idea that a hand gesture can be seen as an attack on men is absurd and companies should be ignoring it.”

When I asked why they were not, she told me that many developers share the gamers’ anti-feminist views. “For all those outside yelling, there are those on the inside who also believe things are bad.”

Then there is the financial cost. The men threaten to boycott the games unless the companies act.

“The gaming companies think the anti-feminists are the largest source of their revenue,” said Minsung. After Darim’s company, Studio Ppuri, was targeted, it said it lost nearly two thirds of its contracts with gaming companies.

Studio Ppuri, did not respond to our questions, but both Nexon, the game developer, and Renault Korea told us they stood against all forms of discrimination and prejudice.

There is evidence the authorities are also capitulating to the anti-feminists’ demands. When Darim reported her abuse to the police, they refused to take her case.

They said because the finger-pinching gesture was taboo, it was “logical” that she, as a feminist, had been attacked. “I was astonished,” she said. “Why would the authorities not protect me?”

Following outrage from feminist organisations, the police backtracked and are now investigating. In a statement, Seocho district police told the BBC their initial decision to close the case had been “insufficient” and they were “making all efforts to identify the suspects”.

The case left Darim’s lawyer, Yu-kyung Beom, dumbfounded. “If you want to say that you’re a feminist in South Korea, you have to be very brave or insane,” she said.

In November 2023, the violence spilled offline and into real life. A young woman, who we are calling Jigu, was working alone in a convenience store late at night, when a man walked in and started attacking her.

“He said ‘hey, you’re a feminist, right? You look like a feminist with your short hair’,” Jigu told me as she apprehensively recounted the night. The man pushed her to the ground and started kicking her. “I kept going in and out of consciousness. I thought I could die.”

Jigu did not consider herself a feminist. She just liked having short hair and thought it suited her. The attack has left her with permanent injuries. Her left ear is damaged, and she wears a hearing aid.

“I feel like I’ve become a completely different person,” she said. “I don’t smile as much. Some days it is agony just to stay alive, the memory of that day is still so clear.”

Her assailant was sent to prison for three years, and for the first time a South Korean court ruled this was a misogynistically motivated crime: in effect, that Jigu had been attacked for looking like a feminist.

During the attack, the man said he belonged to an extreme anti-feminist group, New Men’s Solidarity. Its leader, In-kyu Bae, has called on men to confront feminists. So, one evening, as he held a live-streaming event in Gangnam, a flashy neighbourhood in Seoul, I went to try to talk to him.

“I’m here to tell you these feminists are staining the country with hatred,” he shouted from the roof of a black van kitted out with loudspeakers.

“That psychopath [who attacked Jigu] was not a member of our group. We don’t have members, we are a YouTube channel,” he told me as he simultaneously broadcast to thousands of subscribers. A small group of young men who had come to watch in person were cheering along.

“We’ve never encouraged anyone to use violence. In fact, the violent ones are the feminist groups. They’re shaming men’s genitals,” he added.

Last year, Mr Bae and several of his supporters were convicted of defaming and insulting a feminist activist after harassing her for more than two years.

Anti-feminist views have become so widespread that Yuri Kim, the director of Korea Women’s Trade Union, recently established a committee to track cases of what she describes as “feminism censorship”. She found that some women have been questioned about their stance on feminism in job interviews, while at work women commonly face comments like “all feminists need to die”.

According to Prof Kim, the feminism academic, men are using now feminist threats in the office as a way to harass and control their female colleagues – it is their way of saying ‘we are watching you; you should behave yourself’.

Such harassment is proving effective. Last year, a pair of scholars coined the phrase “quiet feminism”, to describe the impact of what they say is a “pervasive everyday backlash”.

Gowoon Jung and Minyoung Moon found that although women held feminist beliefs they did not feel safe disclosing them in public. Women I spoke to said they were even afraid to cut their hair short, while others said feminism had become so synonymous with hating men they did not associate with the cause.

A 2024 IPSOS poll of 31 countries found only 24% of women in South Korea defined themselves as feminist, compared to an average of 45%, and down from 33% in 2019.

Prof Kim worries the consequences will be severe. By being forced to conceal their feminist values, she argues women are being stripped of their ability to fight against gender inequality, which penetrates workplaces, politics and public life.

Feminists are now busy brainstorming ways to put an end to the witch hunts. One clear answer is legal change. In South Korea there is no blanket anti-discrimination law to protect women and prevent them being fired for their views.

It has been repeatedly blocked by politicians, largely because it would support gay and transgender people, with anti-feminists, and even some trans-exclusionary feminists, now lobbying against it.

Minsung believes the only way to strip the witch hunters of their powers is for the companies and the authorities to stand up to them. They make up a small fraction of men in South Korea, they just have loud voices and a bizarrely oversized influence, he argues.

Since her attack, Jigu now proudly calls herself a feminist. “I want to reach out to other victims like me, and if even one woman has the strength to grab my hand, I want to help.”

Additional reporting by Jake Kwon, Hosu Lee and Leehyun Choi