Abstract
And the problem is huge. Workplace bullying has been at the core of South Korea’s public discourse since 2014, after Cho Hyun-ah, a member of the family that owns flagship airline Korean Air, berated a flight attendant for serving her macadamia nuts in an unopened bag instead of on a plate.
Cho reportedly commanded the purser, Park Chang-jin, to kneel in apology and ordered the plane, at JFK airport in New York, to return to the terminal so she could kick Park off the flight.
That incident made headlines around the world and, in South Korea, sparked a national conversation on entitled and callous behaviour by the rich and powerful elite. Since then, that discourse has evolved to include interactions involving people who may not be rich or powerful but who do use some kind of leverage to demean others.
Park has led public campaigns to rid South Korean workplaces of the kind of treatment he experienced. “We are told just to endure and, if we get attacked, just keep quiet. To change things, we need to get together and acknowledge that so many people suffer like I did, and that should change,” he told Index.
“In Korean society employees are told to just follow the rules and don’t disobey, then you’ll get a salary. Most people think like that. And my co-workers also think that I should be in awe of my boss, and not draw attention to these shameful things. Even though we have a problem, most people tell me, don’t reveal it to other people.
“Korean people think, even though you were attacked, or you were a victim, you should keep quiet, don’t insist on your own gain. If you do that you are not pure any more.
“In some way, our country is like North Korea, in that only a few people have all the power and they ask other people to sacrifice, without caring much about human rights.”
Analysts say bullying has been a feature of Korean organisations going back at least to the early 20th century, when the country was occupied by the Japanese empire. “Korea’s whole experience of modernisation was forced. It came from being under a military occupation, then after independence under a series of military dictatorships,” said Michael Hurt, a research professor at the University of Seoul.
“Everything is still organised under military-style hierarchies, where everyone is either under someone else’s thumb or trying to keep people under their own thumb.”
In one infamous case, video footage of Yang Jin-ho, a tech CEO, brutally assaulting an employee circulated online. The video was taken by many as evidence that it isn’t only old-fashioned corporate workplaces where the worst kinds of bullying take place.
Another incident made national headlines when local media reported that a hospital forced nurses to don revealing outfits and perform a provocative, K-pop style dance routine as part of an annual company gathering.
CREDIT: Gary Waters/Ikon
In this environment, the work of Gabjil119 is essential. The organisation is named because 119 is the Korean equivalent of 911 or 999, the emergency phone number, and “gabjil” is a Korean word that refers to older or more powerful people using their status to bully or intimidate those they see as beneath them.
Gabjil119 does not intervene in workplace disputes and has no mandate to advocate directly for workers in disputes with employers. The group’s main task is to educate workers on the law – specifically, what their employers can legally make them do and how workers can push back if an employer violates the law.
There is pent-up demand for their services. Gabjil is a big enough deal in South Korea that the president has declared changing the culture of bullying to be an official policy goal. A recent survey released by the South Korean legislature showed that 77% of workers at one government body were not aware of any way to deal with workplace bullying other than to simply endure it.
The group is also out to change what members see as shortcomings in labour law. The first major success came in the summer of 2018 with the passage of legislation that required South Korean companies to investigate allegations of bullying. Under the law, companies found to have unfairly demoted or fired workers who have spoken out about having been harassed at work are subject to punishment.
The staff at Gabjil119 celebrated the passage of the law, but they feel the legislation doesn’t go far enough, as it doesn’t mandate punishment for bullies – only for companies that fail to investigate complaints of bullying or reprimand perpetrators. Even if a company’s internal investigation concludes that a boss has mistreated an employee, the company is under no legal obligation to take action.
Park Jum-kyu, a co-founder of Gabjil119, said: “The work environment is changing in terms of how people interact, but when it comes to things involving money, like workers not getting paid or being forced to do unpaid overtime, that hasn’t changed.”
Park said: “People are scared that if they call attention to bullying there could be consequences, like they could be pushed out of the company or their colleagues will turn against them.”
In October, a few months after the law’s passage, Gabjil119 released the results of a survey of 1,000 working people, asking if conditions in workplaces had changed since the legislation came into effect. The results showed that 40% answered that things had changed for the better, and 80% said they would like the scope of the law to be expanded, with punishments for perpetrators.
Park says the data indicates that young workers are still vulnerable. “It’s mostly people in their 40s and 50s that think that the culture is changing. They’re at the age of most perpetrators of gabjil, and they’re scared of the law and they feel like they need to be more careful. But young people feel like things haven’t really changed,” he said.
To connect with mobile-savvy young people, Gabjil119 operates a chatroom on Kakao, South Korea’s most-used mobile messaging service (think WhatsApp with a more alluring colour scheme and cuter emojis). Throughout the day, the chatroom swells with hundreds of messages, as working people reach out for advice. Gabjil119 staff members take turns moderating the chat, responding to each claim and sorting claimants into separate chatrooms which are specialised for workers in particular industries, including call centres, childcare and healthcare.
As its next major objective, Gabjil119 is lobbying the government to phase out South Korea’s widespread and growing use of dispatch and contract employment, which can leave workers more vulnerable to mistreatment or lost wages, and make people afraid to speak out. The group also liaises with workers to discuss creating industry-specific unions that would allow workers to collectively bargain with employers.
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, a professor at the Kyung Hee University School of Global Communication in Seoul, said: “Gabjil is an outcome of this society’s polarisation – the fact that it’s 10% of the country that runs the whole place. The term gabjil itself has limits, in that it describes relations between two particular parties and doesn’t factor in the fundamental structure of society.
“But Korean society is keen on the building of consensus. These kinds of campaigns can push the perception of gabjil to the surface and spur policy changes.”