One quarter of workers in South Korea still face workplace harassment

An estimated one quarter of workers still face harassment in the workplace, according to a survey by Gabjil 119, an advocacy group for workplace bullying victims.

Some 23.5% of 2,000 survey respondents indicated that they had experienced harassment in the workplace in the last 12 months. Sorted by type, 15.7% of harassment involved insults and defamation, 11.4% involved unreasonable instructions, while ostracisation/discrimination comprised 8.9%.

Meanwhile, close to a third of those who said they had experienced harassment highlighted that the level of harassment was severe, and 7.4% of those noted that they had even considered inflicting self-harm or committing suicide, according to Korea Bizwire.

READ: 3.22 million workers in South Korea paid less than minimum wage

Some workers also faced more harassment than others. Non-regular workers (11.7%), non-office-job employees (11.6%) and workers earning a monthly wage of less than US$1,200 (17.4%) experienced a higher level of harassment compared to regular workers (4.6%), office-job employees (3.1%) and those who were making more than US$3,971 per month (5.9%).