Meet the South Koreans using spy gadgets to fight workplace bullying and toxic employers
- Abusive behaviour by people in power is known as ‘gabjil’ – and employees are using hidden surveillance devices to fight back
- Under new laws, company owners who ‘unfairly demote or dismiss’ workers who allege harassment can be imprisoned for three years
Gadgets disguised as leather belts, eyeglasses, pens and USB sticks are all proving popular with employees in a country where abusive behaviour by people in power is so pervasive that there is a word for it: gabjil.
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Under the new legislation, which came into force on July 16, company owners who “unfairly demote or dismiss” workers who allege harassment can be imprisoned for three years or fined up to 30 million won (US$24,700). An online chat room created by lawyers, called Gabjil 119, gives free advice on bullying cases.
Auto Jungbo’s sales of voice recorders so far this year have doubled to 80 devices per day, Jang said as he forecast sales to also double this calendar year to 1.4 billion won.
This glasses frame is a camcorder ... The pen is the most popular though
Jang, whose company is one of around 20 across the country selling the devices directly and supplying other retailers, said other popular devices included electronic car keys and cigarette lighters.
“You can make any shapes, honestly,” he said. “This glasses frame is a camcorder; it’s useful in places you cannot carry some of these devices. The pen is the most popular though.”
A 34-year-old aircraft engineer using the Gabjil 119 site shared an audio recording of a man he said was his boss using expletives to berate him for taking leave to care for a sick family member.
The engineer, who requested anonymity, made the recording on his phone but the confrontation convinced him he needed something more discreet so he snapped up a USB voice recorder “to carry it with me at all times”.
The gabjil culture in South Korea has been enabled by traditions of deference to status in all walks of life, from schools to family-owned conglomerates.
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A few years after Heather Cho ordered her Korean Air plane back to the gate over a bag of nuts, her sister Emily Cho, an executive with the airline’s parent company Hanjin Kal Corp, allegedly threw a drink at a business meeting attendee.
In another incident, a video showed Yang Jin-ho, the chief executive of tech firm WeDisk, assaulting an employee over performance issues.
Heather Cho resigned from Korean Air’s board and was jailed for several months for obstructing aviation safety. Her sister Emily publicly apologised and resigned, before returning Hanjin Kal’s board this June. Yang Jin-ho was arrested on charges of assault and coercion in December and is on trial.
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Those high-profile cases resulted in a public outcry that prompted a cultural rethink, leading local media to dub the new legislation the “Yang Jin-ho Prevention Law”.
The labour ministry said 572 employees had used the new law to file complaints against their workplace by August 29, averaging 17.9 cases registered each day.
Gabjil 119 said around 58 per cent of the 1,844 enquiries in the chat room since the new labour law related to workplace harassment, a much higher percentage than the 28 per cent of the 11,938 inquiries over the previous six months.
