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| Danggeun Market's online flea market service / Courtesy of Danggeun Market |
By Kim Jae-heun
Danggeun Market, the country's largest flea market platform, is facing growing criticism for downplaying a sexual harassment case involving its employees, according to industry officials Tuesday.
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| Danggeun Market CEO Kim Jae-hyun |
The worker said the company only cut wages and lightly reprimanded three workers who were found to have sexually harassed their colleague at the in-house year-end party last December.
"I am really turned off by this company for not protecting the victim but embracing the perpetrators. Is this the same at other companies?" the post read.
The post immediately went viral online, drawing over 700,000 clicks in just two days and being re-twitted over 175,000 times.
A number of users of the popular platform also said they are disappointed at the company and that they will cancel their membership with the online flea market platform.
In response, the company said it will strengthen the company's disciplinary standards, admitting its recent handling of the sexual harassment case did not meet public expectations.
"The company feels a heavy responsibility over the unsavory incident that happened at the company's official event. We are responding sternly to acts that are contrary to professional ethics and disciplinary action has been taken recently through an independent ethics committee," Danggeun Market said in a statement, Monday.
It also said company executives made it clear through an online notice on Monday that they will deal with sexual misconduct more severely than anywhere else, stressing they have strictly reorganized disciplinary standards and quickly formed an independent external advisory committee to prepare follow-up measures so as to prevent any recurrences and to protect victims.
"We had to take a more cautious approach as some of the issues (connected to the incident) were unarguably inappropriate, but some were ambiguous, hard to see as clear and intentional sexual harassment. There were difficulties in determining the level of disciplinary action because there have not been many cases like this here before," the company said.
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