Special for Infobae of The New York Times.
SEOUL — A boss orders a worker to feed and clean up his dog’s poop. An airline heiress turns a taxiing airliner back to the gate to pick up a flight attendant who hassled her. The 10-year-old granddaughter of a newspaper mogul hurls insults at her driver, threatening to fire him for being spoiled.
That kind of behavior has become so common in South Korea that the country already has a term for it: “gapjil.”
The word is a compound term that combines the words “gap”, the people with power, and “eul”, those who work for them and are abused. In South Korea’s deeply hierarchical society, where social position is determined by profession, position and wealth, hardly anyone has escaped this kind of abuse.
More recently, however, the “gapjil” has provoked a negative reaction. On websites, street banners, and even stickers in public restrooms, government agencies, police, civic groups, and businesses offer “gapjil hotlines” that encourage citizens to report gapjils. officials and bosses who abuse their authority.
Using intimidating language, offering bribes, taking advantage of subcontractors, and not paying workers on time are all examples of gapjil. On college campuses, students hang banners accusing “gapjil professors” of sexual harassment.
The campaigns seem to work. Politicians, top government officials and corporate bigwigs have had their reputations ruined by the “gapjil” scandals. Society has been filled with pride—and a healthy dose of “schadenfreude,” or satisfaction at the suffering of others—to see the rich and powerful fall from grace for behaving, frankly, like cretins.
The “gapjil” became an electoral issue during the presidential campaign. The wife of Lee Jae-myung, a leading candidate, has been forced to apologize after being accused of treating government officials like her personal servants, making them pick up takeout orders and do their Christmas shopping while Lee He was provincial governor. Lee narrowly lost the election.
“South Koreans live with a huge tolerance for abuse, but when they can’t take it anymore and they snap, they call it ‘gapjil,'” said Park Chang-jin, a former Korean Air flight attendant who protests against “gapjil” as a leader of the small Party. of Justice, of opposition.
Park knows that feeling.
In 2014, Cho Hyun-ah, the daughter of former Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho, forced a passenger plane taxiing at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to go back to the gate, because it didn’t he liked how the macadamia nuts were served in first class. Park and another flight attendant were forced to kneel before Cho, who let the plane take off only after Park was ejected from the plane.
The Korean Air family was the epitome of “gapjil” again in 2018, when audio and video files surfaced showing another daughter, Cho Hyun-min, and her mother, Lee Myung-hee, yelling insults at each other. Workers. The president had to apologize and remove his two daughters from the managerial positions they held in the company.
There was a time when South Koreans were more likely to tolerate such behavior, especially when it came to the super-rich families that run the country’s business conglomerates, known as “chaebol,” said Gabjil member Park Jum-kyu. 119, a civic group that offers legal advice to victims. (The group uses an alternate spelling of the word.)
“But now people are demanding higher standards about what behavior is acceptable and what is not,” Park said. “Now, when someone says to an authority figure, ‘Are you gaping me?’ the accusation is blunt.”
South Korea has one of the longest work weeks among the world’s wealthiest nations and gapjil is often cited as one of the reasons behind the country’s miserable working conditions. The phenomenon takes many forms, such as excessive hours without paid overtime and harassment by supervisors.
“I hated when it seemed like they had nothing better to do than hang around the office making comments about the female workers’ clothes, saying we couldn’t get married because of the way we dress,” Hong Chae-yeong opined, referring to the male managers of senior in his former corporate job. Hong, 30, said that behavior was one of the reasons she had quit.
Corporate and government elites have been infamous for a type of “gapjil” known as “imperial protocol,” which includes having a line of minions hold umbrellas or take elevators while ordinary people are forced up and down the stairs. In 2017, Kim Moo-sung, a political leader, became a symbol of that kind of haughty attitude when he threw a rolling suitcase at an airport attendant. He later became the subject of public ridicule.
Some trace the origins of “gapjil” to South Korea’s military dictators, who imposed a culture of command and compliance that remains pervasive. It is both “basic grammar” and “a deep-seated malaise” in South Korean society that reflects the “hierarchization its people are addicted to,” wrote Kang Jun-man, a media scholar, in his book about the “gapjil”.
“People who experience ‘gapjil’ at work later do it when they are in a position of authority, such as when they are on the phone with a call center employee,” said Cho Eun-mi, 37, who He left a stationery factory in April over abusive language used by his boss.
Despite the anti-gapjil movement, South Korea may have a long way to go to make its work environment fairer and its society more equal. In 2019, a law against workplace bullying went into effect, but it only results in disciplinary action or a financial penalty of up to $8,000 against violators. In a survey conducted last year by Gabjil 119, nearly 29 percent of workers reported workplace abuse.
“The ‘gapjil’ is still treated as something that needs to be resolved within the company,” said Yun Ji-young, who advocates for human rights and helps victims of “gapjil”. “There is a huge animosity against people who take the problem abroad.”
Without greater accountability, however, Gabjil’s Park 119 fears little will change for South Korean workers tormented by their abusive bosses. “We have ended the military dictatorship and we have removed a president,” he explained. “But we still have to change our work culture.”