Customer service workers (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Nov. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – A major conference addressing the rights and working conditions of emotional laborers, who make up 40% of South Korea’s workforce, was held at Seoul City Hall on November 20, drawing approximately 500 participants including industry workers, experts, and officials.
The conference, organized by the Seoul 120 Dasan Call Foundation, revealed troubling statistics about the challenges faced by customer service workers.
According to Seo Gang-suk, head of the foundation’s civil complaints management department, the call center handled 80,368 abusive or aggressive complaints over the past five years (2020-October 2024), averaging 16,000 cases annually.
The numbers peaked during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 22,780 cases in 2021 and 24,295 in 2022.
One extreme case involved a citizen who filed 1,147 complaints over 15 years, including inappropriate complaints about mosquito bites in residential buildings, sexual harassment via text messages, and verbal abuse.
Another incident saw a caller refusing to hang up for 100 minutes while filing a complaint about illegal parking.
The foundation has taken legal action against sexual harassment and verbal abuse cases, with 35 legal proceedings initiated over five years. Of the concluded cases, 24 resulted in guilty verdicts, while eight cases are still pending.
The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission’s survey of 309 public institutions revealed that the most common type of problematic complaints (48%) involved harassment through persistent and repetitive filing.
This was followed by verbal and physical abuse (40%) and targeted attacks on personal information (6%).
Legal expert Kim Min-jung highlighted a legislative gap, noting that while sexual harassment via phone or text is punishable under communication media laws, there are no provisions for face-to-face encounters, suggesting the need for new regulations.
The conference also marked the launch of a new alliance of call centers from 10 regional governments, including Busan, Incheon, Daegu, Daejeon, Ulsan, Gyeonggi Province, South Chungcheong Province, South Gyeongsang Province, and Gangwon Province.
The coalition aims to develop strategies for handling aggressive complaints, improve support systems for call center workers, standardize consulting statistics, and establish emergency response protocols for unexpected situations such as disasters or disease outbreaks.
Lee Jung-hoon, head of the Labor and Workplace Research Institute, emphasized the need for multiple stakeholders to protect emotional laborers, calling for active monitoring of workplaces, exemplary consumer behavior, strict reporting of misconduct, and participation in legislative improvements.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
