According to Yonhap and the Korean Daily News, on June 23 local time, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung criticized at a cabinet meeting a case where a female firefighter suffered workplace harassment and was forced to drink alcohol, resulting in her death. He described this as 'the worst form of workplace bullying'.
Li Zai-ming learned about this incident during his trip to Europe. He immediately posted on the X platform saying, "It is truly heartbreaking that public officials still have such vile habits today."
Out of concern that the Fire Department might be biased towards its own personnel, he instructed the South Korean National Council for Government Reform to rush to the scene to conduct an investigation. After conducting a comprehensive investigation in Gwangju, the investigation team confirmed that all the accusations made by the victim's family and fiancé were true, including forced drinking, arranging private chores, deliberate disregard of supervisory requests by the fire department, and fabricating the cause of death.
On the 23rd, Lee Jae-myung mentioned this incident during a cabinet meeting and an emergency economic inspection meeting held at Cheong Wa Dae. He said angrily, 'How painful and miserable the deceased must have been during her lifetime. How hurt and wronged her fiancé and family must have felt. Putting oneself in their position, it's simply intolerable to accept such behavior.'
People come to work to make a living, but as a manager, they treat their subordinates as playthings for pleasure. The most crucial issue is that these people are completely oblivious to how harmful their actions are. This is workplace bullying and the worst kind of bullying. He said.
On June 23 local time, South Korean President Li Jae-myeong held a cabinet meeting. Yonhap News Agency
He criticized the current unhealthy practices in the Korean workplace, saying: "On some occasions, female employees are deliberately arranged to sit next to their supervisors, and they are forced to drink alcohol with others, being pressured to drink a whole bottle of strong liquor in one gulp. Those people clearly don’t like drinking alcohol; why is it forced upon them? They can just drink by themselves."
Li Zaiming said that although such practices may have existed in the workplace in the past, such incidents should no longer occur today. He ordered all ministries and commissions to thoroughly reform their internal organizational cultures, so as to prevent any further occurrences of workplace oppression-related incidents.
According to reports, in October 2025, a twenty-year-old female firefighter who had been with the Gwangju Gwang Mountain Fire Department for four years committed suicide without even having time to leave a letter. Her family and fiancé revealed her chat records during her lifetime, which is how the entire incident came to be known to the public.
The exposed chat records show that since the new captain took office in August last year, this woman has been subjected to forced dinners and alcohol pressure for a long time.
She complained to her fiancé, “It’s completely crazy here. People drink extremely hard. They want to finish four beers at once as soon as they sit down.” She also shared with her friends, “During the three-person gathering organized by the security team, I vomited ten times.” “We drank way too much. It felt like we couldn’t hold on anymore. It was really agonizing.”
The woman suffers from workplace bullying that goes beyond just drinking parties. Her team leader also contacts her in private during weekends, ordering her to run errands such as buying coffee and alcohol, and even forcing her to accompany others to KTVs alone. Her fiancé said, “Every time there are gatherings, the victim feels uneasy and often cries alone after the party ends.”
After the incident, the family and their fiancé demanded that Guangshan Fire Brigade thoroughly investigate the truth of the workplace bullying. However, after only seven days of its own investigation, the fire brigade issued a conclusion stating that “no abnormalities were found,” and absolved all involved personnel of responsibility. A week after the deceased passed away, the fire department issued a formal document exempting the deceased from any responsibilities, which falsely stated the cause of death as “dissension in relationships with the boyfriend.”
The fiancé learned of the situation afterwards and went to the Gwangju Fire Department to protest, demanding a re investigation. However, the Gwangju Fire Department used the excuse of “lack of objective evidence” and did not conduct any investigations for a full five months, deliberately delaying the case until last month when the victim’s family went to the National Fire and Rescue Agency to initiate an investigation.
