· Background Discussion to the Issue

Sexual harrassment refers to unwelcome or offensive sexual conduct to a person, which occurs mostly in employment contexts, making the person feel sexually humiliated or discriminating the person by adverse employment decision or treatment.
The term ‘sexual harassment’ dated from the 1970s in the Untied States, when the feminist legal scholars began to use this term to describe illegal gender discrimination against female employees based on unequal power relationship on the job front between men and women, as an increasing number of abuse or exploitation cases were noted that men, especially employers or workplace superiors, caused the female workers verbal or physical harrassment of a sexual nature by using their rank and authority over the victim. In Korea, the term became widely used after a lawsuit by a female research assistant at the laboratory of the Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, filed against her supervising professor in October 1993. In the suit, the plaintiff argued that her employment was terminated after she had refused to give in to the defendant’s sexual demands, such as unwanted physical touching and request for sexual favors.
This action triggered the enactment of the Framework Act on the Women’s Development on December 30, 1995, which stipulated the expression ‘sexual harassment’ now as a legal terminology.
Korea has several laws concerning workplace sexual harassment, including the National Human Rights Commission Act, the Act on Equal Employment and Support for Work-Family Balance Assistance, and the Framework Act on Gender Equality, each of which provides a definition of sexual harassment. In addition, the Child Welfare Act, the Welfare of Older Persons Act, and the Act on the Prohibition of Discrimination of Disabled Persons and Remedy against Infringement of their Rights, etc. include provisions that prohibit and punish sexual harassment.
The Enforcement Decree on Disciplinary Action against Public Officials and the Regulations on the Determination of Penalties for Educational Officials set forth the criteria for determination of punishment’s severity on sexual harassment perpetrated by public officials.
The elements that constitute workplace sexual harassment are first, the parties to the act, that is, an harasser and an harassed who are defined as ‘an employer, a superior or a worker’ and ‘another worker’ respectively under the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. The National Human Rights Commission Act and the Framework Act on Gender Equality define the wrongdoer as ‘an employee of a public agency, an employer or a working person’ but does not give a clear definition of an injured party. The parties to the act of sexual harassment also include a person closely related to the work, such as a customer or client defined in Article 14.2 of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and they can be categorized as work-related personnel (persons in subcontract relationships, or persons in special types of employment) and as clients or customers. Workplace sexual harassment is a matter of employment environment. As such, its regulatory objectives are to create a safe environment in either ‘work, employment, or other relationship’ setting, in which the workers can operate free from discrimination and harassment. The laws, therefore, view that if intimidation or exploitation of a sexual nature is committed at work or on an extension of work, and regardless of what we label it, if the conduct in question takes place between the subject and the object of the conduct in the relationship of ‘direction and supervision in practice’, it should be interpreted as sexual harassment in a broad sense.
The second element is a work relationship. However, it does not mean that the questionable conduct has to be limited to an actual ‘workplace’ and working hours in the sense of physical space and time, in order to establish the second element of a prima facie case of harassment. On the contrary, existence of work-related interaction between the parties is sufficient.
The third element is a conduct of a sexual nature. Sexual conduct can be either a behavior either directly toward another person, or a behavior with unwelcome sexual connotations or innuendoes to another person, whether physically, visually or verbally, to the extent that a reasonable person would feel humiliation or repulsion by that.
The fourth is a sense of sexual offence. In this case, the sense of sexual offence is determined by ‘whether the improper conduct is severe enough to make the target (a reasonable person/a reasonable woman) feel sexually offended. In determining what types of conducts can create a sense of sexual offence, the key that the courts look into is not the intention or motivation of the abuser, but the feeling that the victim has by that act, that is, whether the victim gets to ‘feel sexually humiliated or offended by the conduct in question.’ The fifth element is detrimental effects on the victim’s employment. Based on the negative impact on the employment status, sexual harassment can be divided into two types, one of which is quid pro quo type sexual harassment and the other is hostile work environment type harassment. Quid pro quo type is a harassment that occurs when a supervisor demands the victim of sexual favors or repayment, to which the victim refuses to confer, then the supervisor inflicts some actual disadvantages on the victim on the job, such as termination of employment, demotion, or suspension of work. Unlike quid pro quo sexual harassment, a hostile work environment does not require any employment benefit to be at risk, but rather creates hostile work conditions when the victim refuses to respond to the sexual demand of the supervisor, that are too severe and pervasive that they not only cause the victim psychological harm and sense of repulsiveness by words or actions in sexual nature, but also deteriorate the work environment itself.
In determining whether a contested conduct constitutes workplace sexual harassment, the courts usually adopt a subjective standard which focuses on the victim’s viewpoint first and then consider an objective standard, which inherently accompanies a question of whose standpoint should be used as a standard to judge the matter. Generally, there are three categories in an objective standard, namely, reasonable person standard, reasonable woman standard, and reasonable victim standard.
Reasonable person standard is, by using a hypothetical person of legal fiction who is a representation of an appropriately informed, capable, and fair-minded individual of the community where the event occurs, in ethical, psychological and judgment aspects, to uate whether the person would have felt sexual humiliation or repulsiveness through the conduct in question. Resonable woman standard is made based on the criticisms that reasonable person standard fails to recognize the difference between male and female in accepting and responding to the appropriateness of sexual misconduct, and mistakes social convention or dominant culture as ‘being reasonable’ when applied to uation of the situation in question. It is a standpoint designed to treat the issue from a female perspective, in consideration of the fact that the majority of the victims are female. Reasonable victim standard is to uate the situation by putting a reasonable person in the victim’s position and considering how the reasonable person in social convention would have reacted in the bearings of the victim.
If we look at the various studies on sexual harassment of the last 40 years in the western countries, we can find at least four models or theories that explain sexual harrassment. They are biological, organizational, sociocultural, and individual response models, which is more recently discussed, in chronological order. First, the biological, or natural model is based on two basic presumptions.
The one suggests that sexual harassment is not so much of intentional purpose as the natural outcome of men’s sex drive. The other presumption suggests that men and women are naturally attracted to each other at work and thus participate in sexual activity and like the way they are engaged in with each other. The organizational model maintains that the conduct of sexual harassment is an outcome of opportunity structure, hierarchy and power relationship which have been shaped through a certain institutional culture. In other words, the organizational model views an institution builds a structure of opportunity that fosters sexual harassment, and also creates a work environment in which an individual can obtain sexual satisfaction from his/her inferiors by using the power over the victims and position. The sociocultural model views that sexual harassment reflects the difference or gap of social power and rank between men and women. According to the sociocultural model, sexual harassment operates as a mechanism to support the male dominance over female employees in the workplace, and male-as-norm and social convention appears as a patriarchal phenomenon to justify those norms. The individual response model is a psychological approach to explain sexual harassment, which attempts to distinguish the characteristics of both the people with high-likelihood to sexually harass and the people with high-likelihood to be sexually harassed.
Based on the background discussion to the issue of sexual harassment, this study has performed an empirical research as follows. First, it has avoided the extremely narrow interpretation which considers the operational definition of sexual harassment as ‘simple sexual teasing’, but instead adopted a broader concept of sexual harassment which includes sexual crimes committed at work.
Based on such definition, the present study has examined the primary factors that the people consider when it comes to sexual harassment. Secondly, this study has ascertained the percentage of both harassing and being harassed among the office workers. Thirdly, based on the fact that there exist personal differences in the perception of sexual harassment, this study has reviewed the explanatory power of the individual response model by using various factors, such as sex, age, perception and attitude towards sexual harassment. Fourthly, the present study has investigated the current state of sexual harassment prevention education and strategic responses to the issue from criminal justice policy perspective.

· Determining Sexual Harassment

The following is a summary of the studies on how to determine the presence of sexual harassment in the workplace.
First, a difference has been found between the courts/Human Rights Commission’s point of view and that of the general public. We created a scenario based on an actual Supreme Court case from 2006, where the court rejected the prosecution’s argument and held that there was no sexual harassment (a case in which a senior teacher forced a female teacher to serve him with drink at the company dinner), and asked the general public whether there existed sexual harassment. 77% of male and 90.5% of female respondents answered affirmatively, showing that an absolute majority think the case constituted sexual harassment. Moreover, to another scenario we created, this time, based on a case heard by the Human Rights Commission in 2005 (in this case, a superior at work petered a female worker, asking why she was still single, or touching her on the thighs and biting her forearms), the majority of respondent considered the conduct as sexual harassment with 87.9% of male and 89.2% of female respondents giving an affirmative answer. From these results, an inference could be made that a gap is likely to exist between the judicial institution’s judgment on sexual harassment and that of the general public.
Secondly, a difference was found between the sexes in determination and interpretation of the meaning of sexual harassment, as well as in reactions to the event. Overall, women tended to respond with high scores than men in empathy to the victim, presence of sexual discrimination or forced sexual favors in sexual harassment cases, and gravity of the case. Particularly, in the first scenario (a female teacher was forced to serve a male supervisor with drink), while only 60.7% of male responded that there existed sexual coercion regardless of the female victim’s intention, 85.3% of female considered there existed sexual coercion in the situation, resulting in a 25%p’s substantial difference in their perception. In a scenario that dramatized a simple (verbal) sexual harassment case among the coworkers (4-4), while 58.5% of male respondents judged it was sexual harassment, 77.1% of female respondents did, resulting in 18.6%p difference between the sexes. In the third scenario, where the relationship of the parties was changed from ‘superior – subordinate’ to ‘colleagues’, the will to avoid the problematic situation dropped by 20.1%p among the male respondents.
Overall, in verbal sexual harassment among the colleagues, men demonstrated significantly lower levels of empathy to the victim and less sensitivity towards the event than women, as well as determination of sexual harassment or gravity of the event.
In the meantime, when judging a sexual harassment case, the female respondents considered more cases as sexual harassment than men did, and reported high scores in sexual discrimination, coercion and gravity of the case.
Nevertheless, when being asked how they would respond to the event, more female respondents than the male counterparts answered that they would tolerate the situation, from which we could make an inference that despite the higher level of empathy and sensitivity toward the sexual harassment victim, women tend to have a will not as strong as that of men to resolve the issue and doubt the effects of addressing the issue.
Thirdly, in reaction or response to sexual harassment, a difference was found depending on the expressive form of sexual harassment. In detail, empathy (feeling embarrassed, offended, shamed, sexually humiliated) to the victim of sexual harassment presented in each scenario increased when the conduct involved visual or physical harassment, rather than verbal. Meanwhile, in the first scenario where a female victim was forced to serve her superior with drink, most respondents answered that they would ‘comment to the harasser’ or ‘tolerate the situation.’ Compared to this, when the expression of sexual harassment was more visual or clear physical molestation, the rate of answering that they would ‘tolerate’ decreased while the rate of answering that they would report to the external authorities or criminal justice system, increased. These findings implies that the role of criminal justice organizations, apart from any internal human resources department, is important in regulating workplace sexual harassment.
Fourthly, as for the factors affecting determination of sexual harassment by the type of each scenario, in the first scenario (a female teacher forced to serve a male superior with drink) the expressive manner of sexual harassment was found to be an important factor, as the more verbal the characteristics of sexual harassment was, the more the respondents judged a certain sexual misconduct as sexual harassment. The result signifies that even a simple sexual harassment case without physical touching can be interpreted as serious sexual harassment, depending on the contents of the comment and the context of the event. In the second scenario, the manner of expression and the response of the victim were found to be important factors, and as such when sexual harassment is more visual than verbal in form, and when the victim showed a negative response to the sexual advances than no response whatsoever, the respondents more readily determined the scenario as sexual harassment. In the third scenario, the manner of expression again affected determination of sexual harassment, as we saw that when the harassment was more physical than verbal in form, the respondent more readily determined the presence of the misconduct. Unequal power relationship between the parties was another factor, and as such when the parties’ relationship was more vertical as between a superior and a subordinate, than horizontal as between the colleagues, the respondents were more readily judge the situation as sexual harassment.
In the meantime, interactive effects were found in the fourth scenario, in both the power relationship and the expression manner of sexual harassment. For example, where the conduct of sexual harassment was expressed in a simpler manner, the more respondents considered the situation as sexual harassment when it occurred between a superior and a subordinate, than between the colleagues; however, where the conduct of sexual harassment was more complex (serious), the relationship between the parties, whether between the colleagues or superior-subordinate, did not affect determination of sexual harassment. Based on these results, it is likely that where a conduct of sexual harassment is a complex one involving both verbal and physical abuses, the power relationship between the parties becomes less influential and, instead, seriousness of the expressive manner of the conduct itself becomes the decisive factor for the people to determine the presence of sexual harassment. However, where a conduct of sexual harassment is primarily verbal in form, the possibility of such misconduct being judged as sexual harassment can increase if it, even exactly same comment, occurs between the unequal power relationship of the parties, rather than between the colleagues. It gives us an insight that comments in sexual nature should be more carefully avoided in a vertical relationship in organization.
Lastly, by putting all the factors that affect determination of sexual harassment and analyzing them comprehensively, this study has found that the expression types of sexual harassment and empathy to the victim are the two most influential factors on determination of sexual harassment. Further, empathy to the victim has been confirmed as the most convincing factor in determining the presence of sexual harassment, of which, especially, ‘sense of offensiveness’ and ‘sexual humiliation’ were found to be the most influential factor in determining the presence of sexual harassment. These results signify that when the general public consider a ceratin event as sexual harassment, they put the most stress on how the victim would have felt at the time of the event, although they consider the objective factors related to the event, such as power relationship between the parties and the expressive manner of such conduct, at the same time.
In this sense, that our law (the Enforcement Decree of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act)’s position that whether a certain conduct establishes sexual harassment must be determined, first, by ‘considering the victim’s subjective conditions in priority’ and then the ‘objective conditions’ as a complementary tool is parallel to the public perception, which has been discovered through this research. If the subjective conditions of the victim include the sense of degradation, sexual humiliation, or offensiveness and so on, ‘priority consideration’ of those feelings matches the perception of general public (determination of sexual harassment based on the victim’s sense or feeling toward the event).
Further, these results appear to support the reasonable victim standpoint, an alternative to a reasonable person or a reasonable woman standard. As we can see in the court’s ruling, “If a reasonable person in social convention had been in the position of the victim, how that person would have judged and responded to the conduct in question (Seoul District Court (civil court) 2002.11.26., 2000ga hap5746)”, which displayed the victim’s point of view, the fact that the majority of respondents said about various sexual harassment cases described in this research that had they been put in the victim’s position, they would have felt sexual humiliation, offensiveness and shame etc., and reported that they ‘want to avoid’ the situation and ‘there exist the elements of sexual discrimination or coercion based on a person’s sex and severity of the event’ is analyzed as a meaning that when we presume the participants of this study to be a ‘person with a sound common sense in social convention’, the manner to determine sexual harassment using a victim’s viewpoint is the viewpoint which the majority of the members of our community can infer in common. And therefore, there is no significant flaw in its reasoning.

· Perception Related to Sexual Harassment

The research of the public perception related to sexual harassment has revealed that there exist individual differences in the ‘social convention of sexual harassment’ among the Korea’s general public. In detail, social convention about sexual harassment, fixed idea about traditional sex roles, and social convention about rape are stronger among men, than women. The older the age, the longer the employment history, and the lower the rate of female workers at workplace is, the higher the levels of social notion or convention concerning sexual harassment tend to be. As for the types of work, people working in construction and manufacturing industries turned out to have higher-level of social convention related to sexual harassment.
It has been also found that the scales of measuring convention related to sexual harassment shaped a ‘minus’ correlations in both the degree of determination of sexual harassment and statistic significance level. In other words, the greater the social convention about sexual harassment, the greater the fixed idea about traditional sex roles, and the greater the social convention about rape become, the less cases in the scenarios the respondents judged as sexual harassment.
From this result, an inference is made that personal difference in perception can affect concept of sexual harassment and determination of the presence of sexual harassment.

· Experience Rates of Harassing Others Sexually

In this study, 35% of the total respondents (1,150 individuals) answered that they had an experience of committing sexual harassment at the workplace they are currently involved, of which 36% was make and 34% was female. While there was no significant difference between men and women in the experience rate of harassing others sexually, the types of harassment committed showed some differences between the sexes. In detail, among the male respondents included the types of misconduct are use of sexual metaphors or uation about look/body (23.5%), bawdy and sexual jokes (19.7%), attempting to touch or hold the hands of a person (15.8%), forcing a person to serve at table with drink in company dinner (14.9%), attempting to touch a specific body parts, such as breast/hip (13.8%), physical contact such as kissing/embracing etc. (13.5%), in this order, while among the female respondents use of a sexual metaphor or uation about look/body (22.0%), attempting to touch or hold the hands of a person (17.4%), forcing a person to serve at table with drink in company dinner (16.1%), bawdy and sexual jokes(15.7%), and distribution of sexual facts (11.8%) appeared in this priority. It indicates the experience rates of committing physical sexual harassment are lower among women.
The act of sexually harassing a person tended to decrease as the rates of female workers in labour force increased and also as the rates of temporary workers increased. As for the types of work, the persons engaged in construction industry showed the highest rates of experience of harassing others sexually (48%), followed by the persons engaged in manufacturing industry (38%). Compared to this, only 28% of the persons working in business service or social service industries answered they had an experience of harassing others sexually. The result suggests that improvement measure is needed to prevent sexual harassment in construction and manufacturing industries.

· Experience Rates of Being Sexually Harassed

Of the total respondents, 45% answered that they had an experience, at least once, of being sexually harassed by another person at the current workplace.
Among these, while 35% of male respondents answered they had such an experience at the current workplace, 52% of female respondents answered affirmatively, showing that women have more likelihood to become a victim of sexual harassment.
Just as there was a sexual difference in the method of sexual harassment in the harassing experience, in the experience of being sexually harassed by another person, too, the rate of physical injury was higher among women than men.
Meanwhile, as for the ages, 44% of the 20s, 52%of the 30s, 40% of the 40s and 32% of 50 years old and over answered they had an experience of being sexually harassed by another person. As we see, the persons in their 30s has the highest rate of being sexually harassed, followed by the persons in their 20s and then 40s. Since this was a report concerning the injuries of sexual harassment at the current work, it was expected that the older the ages, the greater the rate of injuries would be. Nevertheless, the 20s and the 30s’ rates of injuries were high and the rates of injuries among 50 years old and over showed the lowest injury rate.
Concerning injuries from sexual harassment, we found a difference in the characteristics of workplace. Although the rate of injuries in this case become higher as the history of work becomes longer; nevertheless, among 10 years or more of work history, the rate of injuries from sexual harassment was the lowest.
As for the types of work, 47% of the respondents in manufacturing industry, 53% of construction industry, and 49% of distribution service industry answered that they had an experience of being sexually harassed, while 39% of the respondents in social business industry said they had never been sexually harassed by another person, displaying differences by the types of industry.
Meanwhile, the existence of a labour union (or registration), or degree of awareness of an organization in exclusive charge of sexual harassment did not affect the experience of being sexually harassed. The injury rate was high when the female ratio is just below the male ratio in the work place, and the higher the rate of temporary employment, the greater the injury rate from sexual harassment became.
As for the response measures to the injuries of sexual harassment, 54.0% of the total respondents said, they ‘had not taken any specific measure but left it as it was’ and this was the highest rates among all answers. Following it, 31.3% of the respondents said that they had discussed the matter ‘with close individuals (colleagues, superior etc.), 14.4% of the respondents said that they ‘had addressed the issue directly to the harasser‘, 11.9% said they ‘had directly reported the matter to the human resources department or relevant internal organization’, 8.3% said that they had reported to an external authority, and 5.0% said they ‘had left the job permanently.’ These results imply that when injuries are caused by sexual harassment, the rate that the victims take self measures is high, while the rate that they report to internal or external organization is low. As for the reasons that the respondents did not take any specific measures, 45.6% answered ‘to consider the relationship with the other/harasser’, 36.3% said that ‘they did not think that their response would change the situation’, 30.6% said that ‘they had been afraid that reporting the case would have caused disadvantages to their employment conditions’, 28.1% said that they had not been particularly offended, 12.5% said ‘they had been afraid to be gossipped. Based on these results, it could be analyzed that when it concerns sexual harassment the perception that ‘reporting does not make any difference’ or ‘they can receive disadvantage on the job’ is strongly rooted among the respondents.

· Sexual Harassment Prevention Education

As for internal sexual prevention education, 59.5% of the total respondents answered that they had an experience of receiving education, while 40.5% answered they had not received an education. Moreover, 61.8% of regular and permanent position and 45.8% of temporary position said they had experienced an education, signifying the experience of temporary workers’ sexual harassment prevention education is relatively low. Also, the shorter the employment history is, the less the experience of prevention education becomes.

As for the method to receive sexual harassment prevention education at work, collective education by an individual instructor was the most frequent manner.
However, according to the types of work, ratio of individual online-education was higher than collective education by an instructor in construction work.
Satisfaction level about the education at work was lower among women than men, and the shorter the employment history is. The reasons why they were not satisfied with the prevention education, 51.6% of the respondents answered that, ‘the effect of preventing sexual harassment seems insignificant’, 31.9% answered ‘people are indifferent to the education’, and 29.7% answered that ‘due to the content of the sexual harassment lecture’.

· Cause of Sexual Harassment

As to the question why do you think sexual harassment occurs, the majority of respondents pointed out ‘the degree of punishment to the harasser is low’, followed by ‘androcentric workplace culture’ and ‘lack of gender equality perception among men’, in this order. First, light punishment should be rectified as to mean proper punishment to the abuser. The punishment does not have to be carried out under the criminal laws, but some restriction to the abuser at the discovery of the misconduct and proper sanction to the abuser when such misconduct is confirmed inside the relevant workplace or company. Unfortunately, the preceding researches have discovered that restriction or sanction to the sexual harasser taken by the company or workplace inside the very organization was often very light to the perspective of the victim. In considerable cases, even secondary harm was inflicted on the victim or the victim quit the job..
Meanwhile, the answers to the question why sexual harassment would occur varied depending on the individuals. In general, the older the demographic group is, the more number of respondent answered that it occurs because the woman did not actively react to the matter. Also, the longer the employment history is, the higher rates of people answered sexual harassment occurs because of women’s sexual behavior or exposure. .
Moreover, more women than men answered that sexual harassment occurs due to lower rank and position of women at work, and the younger the demographic group is, the more respondents agreed to that. Again, more women than men pointed out the society’s male dominant features as the cause of sexual harassment, to which ages 50 and over agreed the least among the all age groups.
The agreement rate that the reason of sexual harassment was light punishment to the victim was higher among women than men, and the younger the age was and the shorter the employment history was, the higher the agreement rate became. A difference was notice also in the types of work. For example, persons working in service industry showed higher agreement rate than the persons in manufacturing or construction. The higher the ratio of female workers in the workplace is, the higher the agreement rate becomes, too.
Based on these results, for the sex (women) and the age group (20s and 30s), the type of work (construction, manufacturing etc.) and the features of the workplace culture (lower ratio of female and higher ratio of temporary employment), to which injuries of sexual harassment occur mostly, at the time of discovery of the occurrence of sexual harassment, the relevant government authority’s continuous guide and monitoring whether the fact-finding process, management of the event, and sanction to the abuser are properly carried out are needed.

· Response Strategies to Prevent and Regulate Workplace Sexual Harassment from the Perspective of Criminal Justice Policy

According to the findings from the studies on workplace sexual harassment, there is still a strong perception to view sexual harassment not as an actionable legal concept, but as workplace culture. Therefore, what is required at this stage is not so much concerns on the regulatory abuse to prevent the evil, as rectification of the perception on sexual harassment and more attention to the current regulation system. At the same time, improvement of the system and process to protect the victims of sexual harassment at work should be made. In this context, this study proposes a few strategic responses to prevent and regulate workplace sexual harassment issue from the viewpoint of criminal justice policy.
1) Pressure or humiliation imposed on the victim of workplace sexual harassment, whether tangible or intangible, results from the ambiguity or unclarity inherent in the concept of sexual harassment itself and lack of standards for determination in a considerable part. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the standard set to determine the presence of sexual harassment and the issues in the management process so as to clearly define the nature of workplace sexual harassment as a wrongdoing, which is itself legally actionable.
2) Once a claim is made in relation to workplace sexual harassment, a protection system for the alleged victim should run, even if the alleged sexual misconduct is still to be proved. Since an early response to the victim who files a complaint is crucial, safeguard action for the alleged victim should be exercised in full force and scale to prevent creation of hostile work environment.
3) The workplace or business structure itself should foster a certain degree of sensitivity about sexual harassment on the job, and deeply reflect on its own organizational culture in which sexual harassment can be committed on a regular basis, Dismissing the injuries of sexual harassment as trifling of personal matter
should be avoided. The system should be improved in a direction that the employers’ duty of management and supervision will be more clearly defined so that even if a victim of workplace sexual harassment reports the matter internally or externally, the victim’s employment should not be at peril. Penalties for the harasser, such as termination of employment, does not exempt the employer from its own duty in connection with the occurrence of sexual harassment.
4) Currently, there is still a lack of consensus or consciousness about the concept of disadvantageous measures in interpreting the relevant legal provision which prescribes prohibition of giving any adverse treatment to the victim in order to protect him/her.
For the concept and contents of disadvantage measures of the employer, a consensus should be made through case-studies and research. Moreover, upon discovery of workplace sexual harassment, whether criminal-law-based-restriction to the employer is an appropriate and effective measure against the employer’s violation of the legal provision of prohibiting disadvantageous measure to the victim requires further empirical study.
5) Finally, in determining the presence of sexual harassment and protecting the victim, a deeper understanding of the standpoint of the victim, as the very party to the event, is necessary. It means that the courts should consider the victim’s viewpoint when judging the presence of workplace sexual harassment, and that upon discovery of occurrence of sexual harassment at workplace, as an ex-post facto measure, an internal organization within the company or business entity that exclusively handles and gives consultation to sexual harassment issue should be available to the victim and become more professional in its function.