If you click on the pornography picture, the animal video… Group chat rooms for office workers are distressing

Mr. A, a public official who works in Sejong City, was surprised to see a video posted in the message room for a business group with more than 30 people last month. This is because a photo of a woman with high exposure was uploaded as a so-called’thumbnail’ (thumbnail), a still image before the video was pressed. It was a video sent by a middle-aged boss in charge of the group message room.

It was a still picture of a woman wearing heavily exposed clothes, but the content of the video was a video of someone slipping in the snow. Following the video, the middle-aged manager posted a message saying, “Be careful on the way home from work.” Subsequently, messages such as “I thought you made a mistake. Haha the ice road is dangerous” and “I was surprised” came and went.

Mr. A said, “Middle-aged men upload unfamiliar still images in the group message room for business. When pressed, it seems that they know that the other person is funny, not with obscene images, but with animals or ordinary images, but it is inappropriate and unpleasant.” (They) don’t know what’s wrong.”

With Corona 19, working from home has become more common than before, and the frequency of communication through group messages for business has increased. Due to the increase in the frequency of working from home, work instructions and feedback appear more often in the group message room than in the face-to-face working days before Corona 19. As such, it is said that employees with lower ranks try to check and respond faster than before when new messages arrive.

As orders and communication increased, so did the bosses”baby gag’. Some’baby gag’ goes beyond the Tao and induces shame. A still image of a video, which is no different from pornography, comes up wrapped in’reverse humor’. However, it is a grievance of 2030 office workers that the website linked to the video content or link is a sound post and is ambiguous to raise a problem. In addition, even when raising a problem, the company’s lack of sensitivity to gender sensibility is said to be high in fear of being pointed out as a sensitive person or’being captured’.

Mr. B, a 30-year-old office worker, said, “I had a lot of similar experiences when I was an intern a few years ago.” Mr. B continued, “In the group message room instructing the interns to work, the manager at the time sent a link containing the words’alone, leaked, ajumma’ like a screen shot of an adult site. When you click it, it is a humorous bulletin board. I couldn’t do it. Even though I was fun, the viewers were unpleasant and painful.”

Y, a female employee in her twenties, complained of frustration, saying, “No matter how much formal sexual harassment prevention training you receive in the company, it is useless,” and “the bosses seem to have no idea why such behavior is a problem.”

Sharing a message or video that causes sexual humiliation or disgust in a group message room is an obscene act using communication media under the Sexual Violence Penalty Act. In this case, they may be imprisoned for up to two years or fined up to 20 million won.

The lawyers said that even if they were packaged with’reverse humor’, it could be punished by sending obscene still images. “If the picture itself causes sexual shame and disgust, a crime can be established even if the video content or the linked site is irrelevant,” said Suh Hye-jin, director of human rights at the Women’s Bar Association. “No.”

He pointed out, “If you think about whether the video or picture can be sent to the president or the representative, there are many cases where there is no way. Middle-aged people can’t keep up with the gender sensitivity of the younger generation, but wrong sex ideas need to be reflected.”

Jeong-woo Koo, professor of sociology at Sungkyunkwan University, said, “From the perspective of a boss, you may think,’I asked you to laugh, but I rushed to die’, but when the context of sexual harassment is created, the perspective of the victim is important.” If you convey the points, your bosses need to realize it and make an effort to improve it,” he advised.
Reporter, Women’s Bureau [email protected]