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Business|‘No Closure, No Transparency’: Harassment Victims Seek Resolution
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/business/workplace-sexual-harassment-south-korea.html
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Fewer women in South Korea are reporting workplace harassment, but those who do say their claims are often not taken seriously or handled sensitively.
Nov. 14, 2025, 12:00 a.m. ET
At the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018, South Korea changed its workplace law to require companies to take sexual harassment claims more seriously.
The landmark amendment imposed harsher penalties for employers who failed to prevent or respond to sexual harassment, and it forced companies to take steps when misconduct was reported. Since then, the percentage of people experiencing workplace sexual harassment has fallen by half, according to a government survey from 2024.
The news, however, is not all good. Employers are fulfilling their legal obligation to investigate reports of misconduct, but women who experience harassment say companies are not doing enough when incidents arise. In the same national survey, more than one-third of people who reported harassment said their company took “no appropriate action,” a fivefold increase from 2021 findings.
The surge in dissatisfaction is a sign of South Korea’s uneven progress in addressing sexual harassment and a signal that companies have not fully met expectations for accountability.
Baek SongYi, an employee in the Seoul office of the San Francisco-based technology company Salesforce, said she was put through a horrifying ordeal after reporting her male boss for sexual harassment last year.
At a team dinner three years ago, Ms. Baek had an inkling that her manager was about to cross a line.
