This file photo shows people crossing a street in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, April 25 (Korea Bizwire) — While the overall situation appears to be improving, 1 in 4 office workers are still being subject to harassment in the workplace, a survey showed Sunday.
Gabjil 119, an advocacy group for workplace bullying victims conducted a survey of 2,000 office workers, in which 23.5 percent said they had experienced harassment in the workplace in the last 12 months.
After reaching a peak of 36 percent in September 2020, the incidence of harassment appears to be improving.
Sorted by type of harassment, 15.7 percent involved insults and defamation, followed by unreasonable instructions (11.4 percent) and ostracization/discrimination (8.9 percent).
Close to one-third of those who said they had experienced harassment at the workplace complained that the level of harassment was severe and 7.4 percent said they had even considered inflicting self-harm or committing suicide.
In particular, non-regular workers (11.7 percent), non-office-job employees (11.6 percent) and workers earning a monthly wage of less than 1.5 million won (US$1,200) (17.4 percent) were subject to more harassment than regular workers (4.6 percent), office-job employees (3.1 percent) and those who were making more than 5 million won per month (5.9 percent).
The individuals behind the harassment were primarily superiors (39.8 percent), followed by management (27.7 percent) and colleagues (21.3 percent).
Only 6.6 percent, however, managed to report the harassment to relevant agencies within the company, labor unions, or the Ministry of Employment and Labor.
Among the cases reported, only 12.9 percent were officially recognized as harassment.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
