A victim's campaign for the right to know

Baek Song-yi, 40, a South Korean workplace harassment survivor turned advocate, is pushing for legal changes that would give victims the right to know how their bullies were disciplined. Her campaign, reported by The Japan Times and several other outlets, follows her own experience at a U.S. firm with offices overseas, where she was verbally harassed by her boss.

When Baek reported him, the company asked her to sign a confidentiality agreement warning that she could be fired for disclosing information discussed during the process. "I was just so stunned," Baek told AFP, adding she had believed her employer encouraged victims to come forward. She refused, and the investigation proceeded--ultimately upholding her complaint.

Yet the company declined to disclose the disciplinary action taken against her harasser, citing the need to "align with a privacy protection law" in South Korea. An investigator told her only that the harasser would be "monitored." Baek, who has since left the company, never learned whether her request to bar the man from the firm's South Korean office was granted.

"I just felt like victims are left with no closure, no sense of justice and no way of knowing," she said. The Japan Times and other outlets reported this as a "troubling paradigm" in South Korea's workplace harassment response, with victims often expected to keep silent while employers have no clear legal duty to inform them of case outcomes.

Legal gaps and a 'pointless' law

Baek is now campaigning for legislation similar to California's Silenced No More Act, which restricts non-disclosure agreements in workplace harassment cases, and for a clear legal right for victims to be informed of disciplinary measures.

Her push comes seven years after South Korea introduced a workplace anti-bullying law, which critics say fails to guarantee adequate protections. A study last year by the workplace abuse support group Gapjil 119 found that only 15.3 percent of victims reported harassment. Nearly half of respondents said they believed action would change nothing, and about one-third feared career repercussions.

Labor attorney Kim Yu-kyung, interviewed across the reports, explained that employers currently have full discretion over whether to disclose disciplinary action because no provision requires them to inform the victim.

"Nearly half of respondents said they believed action would change nothing, and about one-third feared career repercussions," the study found. That data first appeared in The New Indian Express's coverage, which also quoted Kim.

A second case: Yoo's 10-month ordeal

The reports also chronicle the case of a woman identified only by her surname Yoo, who spent about 10 months pursuing a complaint against her former employer, a South Korean firm. Yoo's employer cited privacy concerns and said only that action had been taken under company rules.

The labor ministry eventually upheld Yoo's complaint and allowed her to inspect the company rules—but only in person, without photos or notes. That is how she discovered that the rules contained no provisions on workplace harassment. She was eventually told that her harasser had merely been asked to submit a written account of the incident.

"I felt like victims are left with no closure, no sense of justice and no way of knowing," Yoo said, echoing Baek's refrain (as reported by The Korea Times and The New Indian Express). She said she suffered insomnia and panic attacks after quitting over the harassment.

Official response: recommendation, not obligation

When Baek turned to Seoul's regional labour office, she was told the company had complied with the law. A labour official said in a recorded call reviewed by AFP that no provision requires disclosure of what measures the perpetrator received. The official said the company was required only to ask Baek what measures she wanted before deciding what action to take.

The slightly divergent coverage comes to the same central point: victims are kept in the dark. The Japan Times and The Korea Times both quoted labour attorney Kim Yu-kyung as saying employers have full discretion over whether to disclose disciplinary action. A labour official, in an AFP interview aired by The New Indian Express, confirmed that the law does not mandate disclosure.

In July, the labour ministry revised its workplace harassment guidelines, recommending that employers share with victims the outcome of investigations and the basis for their conclusions. But the ministry said that mandating such disclosure would require careful consideration, weighing the involved parties' privacy and individual rights. This leaves the change as a recommendation rather than a legal requirement.

Baek told the Japan Times that she reached out to several South Korean lawmakers proposing restrictions on confidentiality agreements and a requirement that employers disclose disciplinary measures to victims. None responded.