By Choi Sung-jin
Almost nine out of 10 Korean workers have experienced the boss-subordinate relationship called “gapjil,” a survey showed Tuesday.
Gapjil, roughly translated as bossing around or “playing gap,” comes from the contract term “gap” (party A, who leads) and “eul” (party B, who is led). So bosses are gap and subordinates are eul, men are gap and women are eul, and large companies are gap while their subcontractors are eul.
In the survey by job portal Saramin of 865 workers, 89.1 percent of respondents said they have been victims of “gapjil” at least once. Asked who mistreated them, 71 percent pointed to company people and 29 percent to outsiders. Workers were able to give multiple answers to many of the questions.
More specifically, 52.4 percent said their immediate supervisors treated them unfairly by abusing their power, followed by 36.3 percent who pointed to company executives, 19.5 percent who cited employees at their buyer firms and 15.8 percent who nominated customers. The smallest share of 10.1 percent experienced gapjil through family members of owners.
As to the type of gapjil, the largest portion, 59 percent, cited arrogant behavior, including crude talk, followed by abrupt task assignment (53.6 percent), rejection of opinions (39.7 percent), discriminate treatment (33.6 percent) and character assassination (33.5 percent). Some 2.7 percent said they suffered physical violence.
Asked to name the negative effects of gapjil in a multiple-reply question, 84.2 percent cited work disincentives, 72 percent talked about work disruptions resulting from stress and 63.4 percent cited a fall in devotion to the company.
Nine out of 10 workers also said they suffered from diseases caused by gapjil. Most frequent were stomach troubles (62.4 percent), followed by headache (56.2 percent), insomnia (37.3 percent), anorexia (26.6 percent) and hair loss (18.4 percent). Some 60 percent considered quitting their company or moving to other firms because of gapjil, and 33.7 percent actually did, the survey showed.
But 42.8 percent of victims did not make issue with unfair treatments because “it won’t make differences anyway” (66.7 percent), “didn’t want to make a whole thing out of it” (64.9 percent) and “afraid of disadvantages” (56.7 percent), the survey said.