By Lee Ji-hye
A Korean online recruitment website on Friday deleted a set of example answers after a women's organization condemned the content for having sexist connotations.
Work Net, a webpage created by the ministry of labor and managed by the Korea employment information service, previously uploaded a post titled "examples of good answers for women job applicants".
According to the Hankyoreh newspaper, the post "advising" applicants read, "There have been numerous trials recently relating to sexual harassment, and companies had to face difficulties because of women that were overly sensitive about this".
One of the reported example answers was, "I think the way males and females accept matters are different. If it is a lightweight statement on sex, I will not mind it much, and believe that people need to be able to casually joke back about it".
The Korean Women's Association United (KWAU) released a public statement condemning the post, stating that most women would have recognized gender discrimination in the content.
"We demand Work Net and the Ministry of labor to not only delete its post advising female applicants, but also issue a public apology, and present how they will prevent even more discrimination from taking place during job interviews," demanded the KWAU in its statement.
"Good" answers also included, "I do not have any plans to get married as of now," adding that the post advised women that interviewers have a tendency to be reluctant about recruiting someone with a fiance or a long-term boyfriend.
Following KWAU's statement, an official from the ministry of labor told Hankyoreh that the post was "deleted after being seen as problematic."
The post was deleted at 3 p.m., about three hours after the statement was released.
"We will look into the exact process of how this post was uploaded and consider holding sex education sessions for the information services workers," the official was quoted as saying.