By Lee Kyung-min
A special investigation team has questioned a prosecutor who raised a sexual harassment allegation that sparked a flood of #MeToo-style claims in Korea over the past week. The team, under the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, questioned Seo Ji-hyun, Sunday, who claimed then a senior prosecutor Ahn Tae-geun groped her at a funeral eight years ago.
The questioning came amid full-blown #MeToo-style campaigns among women who share similar experiences on social networking websites. Hundreds of internet users supported the online campaign launched by female cabin crew at Asiana Airlines seeking to file a complaint with the Ministry of Employment and Labor against Chairman Park Sam-koo, for organizing a monthly event where they were forced to give him a hug or a shoulder rub. The crew said they were required to “look pretty” and line up in a lobby at company headquarters in Gangseo, Seoul, every first Thursday of the month at 7:30 a.m. Some supervisors reportedly asked the women to run to him first clapping, cheering and crying and to give presents. Others said they were not allowed to have short hair or to wear pants suits. The company said Park only tried to boost the workers’ morale, adding that no one was forced to attend or suffered physical harm. Many attendants responded, “It is the person who was harassed that has the right to say whether the act was inappropriate, not the perpetrator.”
The team under the district office will determine whether Seo was subject to undue punishment including unwanted relocation to rural areas and poor evaluations from sudden work performance reviews, as she alleged. Ahn maintains the harassment did not happen, but also said that he could not recall anything because he was drunk.
The team will also review how and why Seo’s then-supervisors failed to conduct a thorough investigation into the allegation and whether outside influence was involved, a claim denied by the justice ministry. The ministry maintains that the matter was closed because Seo had not “vigorously” demanded punishment for the alleged perpetrator at the time. Justice ministry officials are likely to be questioned for allegedly failing to resolve the incident promptly and about why Minister Park Sang-ki failed to implement disciplinary action for more than two months following a meeting between Seo and a ministry official held under his directive after she sent an e-mail seeking redress. The ministry refused to disclose what happened at the meeting, citing the “sensitivity” of the matter. No punitive measures can be taken now, because Ahn was dismissed and the statute of limitations has expired.
Kim Jae-ryon, a defense attorney for Seo, said earlier she suspected the minister deliberately kept quiet out of fear that such an “explosive” allegation would have considerable repercussions. Kim resigned as Seo’s attorney following heavy criticism of remarks she made over a foundation set up with 10 billion yen for former sex slaves under Japanese occupation during WWII. “I hope we can do our best by yielding to make the future peaceful,” she said then, drawing criticism for undermining the victims’ dignity. Most of them and the public at large took it as an insult because Japan failed to acknowledge its legal responsibility by trying to “buy off the victims.”