Female prosecutor discloses atmosphere of pervasive sexism in the workplace

Posted on : 2018-01-31 16:26 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Seo Jin-hyeon’s complaint documents the humiliations she was subjected to at the Changwon District Prosecutors’ Office
Prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun of the Tongyeong Branch of the Changwon District Prosecutors’ Office claims she was exposed to sexual abuse and harassment from former prosecutor Ahn Tae-geun.
Prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun of the Tongyeong Branch of the Changwon District Prosecutors’ Office claims she was exposed to sexual abuse and harassment from former prosecutor Ahn Tae-geun.

Seo Ji-hyeon, a female prosecutor from the Tongyeong Branch of the Changwon District Prosecutors’ Office (she entered the Judicial Research and Training Institute in 2002), is in the news because she claims to have been sexually abused by a senior member of the Justice Ministry. But in fact, the sexual abuse she experienced was hardly a rare occurrence: the confession she posted to an internal message board at the prosecutors on Jan. 30 details constant discrimination, verbal abuse and sexual harassment.

Seo said she had to endure harsh treatment from the very beginning of her appointment as prosecutor. During an official dinner she attended two days before her job began, a senior prosecutor spoke to her spitefully: “I don’t like graduates of Ewha Womans University or female prosecutors. You’re both of those things, so we’re going to be worst enemies.” As Seo recalls, the senior prosecutor went on to say, “I think that women are 50% as good as men. So if you want any credit, you’ll have to work at least twice as hard.”

A senior colleague nodded his head in agreement and told Seo she had better remember what she had been told. In Seo’s account, another senior colleague said, “What kind of woman has ankles that thick? Women are supposed to have skinny ankles!” A third senior colleague would tell raunchy stores at every opportunity, and a fourth criticized her for laughing too much and then, when she held back her laughter, scolded her for not laughing.

Seo also described how another senior prosecutor who was always bragging about his two daughters stubbornly tried to get her to slow dance with him at a karaoke room. On the weekend, Seo’s boss would take her male colleagues out “somewhere nice,” and then the following Monday morning, they would all laugh about how “the boss had some woman’s panties on his head” right in front of her.

Seo personally experienced explicit sexual harassment. After one dinner with her co-workers, a married senior colleague asked her, “Aren’t you lonely? I don’t know what I’m going to do about how pretty you’re looking these days.” One junior colleague, who was also married, tried to bully her. “Ji-hyeon, I’m so lonely I don’t want to go home today. I’m not going to let you out of the car unless you give me a hug,” he said. Another senior colleague got drunk and wrapped his arms around her, saying, “Come here, Ji-hyeon, and give me a hug!”

During karaoke, she was rubbing her hands, which were sore from playing the tambourine, when a senior prosecutor (whose name she doesn’t remember) said, “Thanks to you, we didn’t have to hire a female entertainer.” One senior colleague kept saying things like “Sleep with me and I’ll give you a night you’ll never forget” only to claim the next day that he didn’t remember any of it.

Seo also shared shocking experiences she had had while dealing with cases. When she was nearing the end of her pregnancy, she had to investigate a case of perverse sexual assault because her superior said that only female prosecutors could handle cases of sexual violence. When a woman who was carried from a night club to a motel and then raped, the senior prosecutor refused to press charges because “women who go to a night club are consenting to sex afterward.”

This is how Seo explained why she had put up with such degrading circumstances: “I had heard so many of my superiors constantly complaining about the future of the agency since there were more than 100 female prosecutors now. I always felt pressured by the idea that I would embarrass all female prosecutors if I made a single mistake.” Whenever the going got tough, Seo said, the only thing she could do was bite down hard on her lower lip and soldier on.

By Kim Yang-jin, staff reporter

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