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SEOUL, April 7 (Korea Bizwire) — About 8 out of 10 journalists in South Korea have experienced psychological trauma related to their work during their career, a survey showed Wednesday.
The Journalists Association of Korea and the Korean Women Journalists Association jointly conducted a survey of 544 journalists.
At 78.7 percent or 428 individuals, the majority said yes to a question asking if they had experienced psychological trauma during their tenure as journalists.
By gender, 77.3 percent or 260 out of 336 male journalists said they had experienced psychological trauma, lower than 80.7 percent (168) for female journalists (208).
Among those who had such experiences, 59.3 percent said trauma-causing incidents happened two to three times per year, followed by 26.9 percent who said two to three times per month and 9.6 percent who said two to three times per week.
At 46.9 percent, close to half said that the duration of trauma was 1 to 30 days, followed by 43.9 percent who said it went on for more than a month.
Considering that if the duration of trauma exceeds one month, it is diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the results of the survey can be interpreted as a medical alarm bell for a large number of journalists.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
