A blind survey on sexual violence in the public sector conducted by the gender equality and family ministry showed that 67.3 percent of alleged victims did not report their experience to their respective institutions. (Image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) — The majority of recent sexual harassment cases within public sector workplaces supposedly went unreported, a government poll showed Friday.
A blind survey on sexual violence in the public sector conducted by the gender equality and family ministry showed that 67.3 percent of alleged victims did not report their experience to their respective institutions.
The online poll was open to 569,000 public sector workers from March 12-April 6. Of those, 40.8 percent, or 232,000, participated in the survey.
Among the respondents, 6.8 percent said they had experienced sexual harassment or violence at least once in the past three years. Among the alleged victims, 23.4 percent said they sought personal help from close colleagues, while only 4.5 percent sought help from senior workers.
Only 3 percent directly reported their incidents to appropriate officials within their workplaces, the poll showed.
As to the reasons why victims did not officially report their cases, 37.3 percent said they were concerned that the incident would not remain confidential, while 20.7 percent expressed worries that their complaints would not be dealt with fairly.
“We will conduct thorough field inspections regarding sexual harassment and violence within public sector workplaces based on the survey results,” Lee Sook-jin, vice minister of gender equality and family, said.
(Yonhap)
