More than half of soldiers who experienced sexual grievance harm during military service did not seek official help such as counseling or filing a report, a survey found. Many said they worried about retaliation after reporting.
The National Human Rights Commission on the 29th held a forum to prepare measures to improve the military sexual grievance response system and released survey results with those findings. The survey, conducted last year, covered 1,606 people (480 officers, 980 soldiers, and 146 sexual grievance counselors).
Among responding soldiers, 3.1% had experienced sexual harassment. Soldiers who experienced sexual violence and digital sexual violence were each 1.8%. Although the rate of direct experience was low, the vast majority chose "silence" in the response process afterward.
Only 40% of soldiers who directly experienced sexual grievances officially sought help. The remaining 60% buried the incident without separate counseling or reporting.
The biggest reason for not raising the issue through official channels was concern about secondary harm. Among reasons for not reporting despite being harmed, the response rate for "concern about secondary harm such as disadvantages or retaliation" was 33.3%.
The response rate for "I did not think it was serious enough to warrant counseling or reporting" was also 33.3%. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) interpreted this as a tendency to perceive actual harm as less serious.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said, "Concerns about secondary harm emerged as the most significant barrier to responding to sexual grievances," adding, "Soldiers feel anxious that reporting sexual grievances could instead work against them."
The situation was the same for officers. As reasons officers did not officially disclose sexual grievance harm, "because it did not seem it would be resolved even if reported," "because it seemed they would suffer secondary harm such as disadvantages or retaliation after reporting," and "because they thought they would be stigmatized as a problematic officer and find unit life difficult," each recorded a 25% response rate.
In particular, 12.5% of female officer respondents said sexual grievance issues in the military were "serious." That was about 1.8 times higher than male respondents (7.0%).
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) analyzed, "For male officers, personal or situational judgments and doubts about the effectiveness of reporting were the main reasons for not taking official action," and "For female officers, concerns about secondary harm and reputation tended to play a larger role."
There was an assessment that the system should be improved so victims can respond to sexual grievances through official channels. Park Sun-hyang, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Strategy, said, "It is necessary to strengthen effective support for victims of military sexual grievances, establish a hotline that enables 24-hour counseling and reporting, and improve the efficiency of operating sexual grievance counselors."