‘No Closure, No Transparency’: Harassment Victims Seek Resolution

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.

“I don’t know if I should say this in front of other people,” he said, according to a harassment report that she filed with the company and shared with The New York Times.

She instinctively covered her ears. “Please don’t,” she had told him.

But he carried on: “When I was young, I wanted to impregnate all the women around me. Men want to leave their DNA behind,” Ms. Baek reported him telling the group.

Then, during a meeting last year, a discussion took place about emergency preparedness in Japan after an earthquake. Ms. Baek’s boss said a single woman like her would “get raped” if she sought refuge at an evacuation center, according to her report. On a different occasion, he encouraged Ms. Baek to date an executive who he said was unhappy in his marriage, she reported in her account to the company.

Ms. Baek, 39, wanted Salesforce, a company with 76,000 employees globally, including several hundred in South Korea, to take disciplinary action against him. In the report, she alleged there were numerous examples of her manager’s inappropriate and offensive remarks over a two-year period.

But before her first meeting with an investigator, the company’s employee relations department sent her a confidentiality agreement that said she could face disciplinary action and possible “involuntary termination” if she spoke to anyone else about her experience.

Five months later, Ms. Baek said, the employee relations department informed her that it had completed its investigation and found her former manager had violated company policies. But Salesforce refused to disclose the disciplinary action taken. Ms. Baek had been reassigned to a different manager, but she later learned that her former boss was in the same role as before.

She is concerned, she said, that the company “really didn’t do anything to prevent him from repeating the same behavior.”

In a written statement, Salesforce said it “doesn’t tolerate inappropriate conduct of any kind in line with our workplace policies.” When concerns are raised, Salesforce said, the company will “investigate fairly, thoroughly, and promptly — and take appropriate disciplinary and remedial action.”

A Salesforce spokeswoman stated that confidentiality agreements were put in place to safeguard the integrity of the investigation and were different from a more formal nondisclosure agreement of unlimited duration.

In 2022, Salesforce said it would allow all U.S. employees to speak freely about harassment or discrimination, after California passed the Silenced No More Act, which limits the use of nondisclosure agreements in cases of workplace misconduct.

South Korean law requires that every report of workplace harassment be investigated. But some employers do not take misconduct claims seriously or handle investigations with sensitivity, according to labor lawyers, activists and women who shared their accounts of workplace harassment with The Times.

Investigations, they said, can be fraught because the country’s legal definition of sexual harassment leaves room for employers to interpret what is acceptable conduct. In addition, they said, misconduct is not always thoroughly investigated because the accused is typically well connected within the company.

South Korean women “bear the burden when they report sexual harassment at the workplace,” Jeong Seul Gi, a labor lawyer in Seoul, said.

In South Korea, the percentage of women in the work force lags behind that of most developed economies, and the country has one of the largest gender wage gaps. Women hold only 8 percent of corporate executive roles in the country, according to Leaders Index, a research firm.

A woman in her 40s who works at a technology outsourcing company in Seoul said her then-boss had made repeated comments about her appearance and asked her what she did when she went on dates with men. She asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation but shared with The Times a report she filed with the company detailing her allegations.

He told her that he had been unsatisfied with his sex life with his ex-wife, according to the report, and touched her hands without permission, which made her feel disgusted. He also arranged opportunities for them to be alone, inviting her to what she thought was a group dinner with other colleagues. When she arrived at the restaurant, however, it was just the two of them, the report said.

After filing the report, she said, she was informed that it had been shared with her boss. Six months later, the human resources department sent her an email, which she shared with The Times, that said the company had determined her former boss had engaged in sexual harassment. He left the company before any disciplinary action was taken, according to a later email from H.R. She said she felt he did not suffer any real consequences for his behavior.

Lee Tae Eun, a partner at Yulchon, a South Korean law firm, said it was hard to fire someone for misconduct under the country’s law except in the most egregious cases. By comparison, he said, many people in the United States are subject to at-will employment, which allows them to be terminated for any legal reason without prior notice.

In addition, he said, many South Korean companies are reluctant to share how an employee was disciplined, because “generally companies are extremely concerned about defamation risk.” South Korea has strict defamation laws, which carry not only civil but also criminal liability. If a statement is deemed not to be in the public interest, Mr. Lee said, it could be considered defamatory even if it is true.

For Ms. Baek, Salesforce’s handling of her harassment deepened her distress. When she felt the company was not taking her complaint seriously, she reported it to South Korea’s labor commission to investigate the company for malpractice.

The commission found that Salesforce had not violated any rules, according to a recording of a phone call between Ms. Baek and a commission officer reviewed by The Times.

In an email to Ms. Baek, a Salesforce employee relations investigator said it had consulted with South Korean lawyers and decided that sharing the disciplinary action taken by the company would violate “the privacy rights of the accused employee.”

Ms. Baek said, “I’m a victim, and I don’t have the right to know anything.”

She hopes that South Korea will pass laws to increase transparency regarding corporate investigations and their outcomes. But until then, she said, women will continue to pay a toll.

“No closure, no transparency and no safety,” she said.