Civilian Military Employee Dismissed for Sexually Harassing Subordinates... Court Says "Dismissal Excessive"

[Financial News] A court has ruled that the dismissal of a civilian military employee who sexually harassed subordinates and forced them to work overtime was an excessive measure.
According to the legal community on the 8th, the 14th Division of the Seoul Administrative Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff on December 18 last year in a lawsuit filed by Grade-5 civilian military employee A against the Chief of Staff of the Republic of Korea Air Force, seeking to overturn his dismissal.
A, who worked at the Republic of Korea Air Force Aerospace Medical Center, was dismissed in July 2023 on charges including sexual harassment, abusive conduct, and abuse of authority. The grounds included making inappropriate remarks to subordinates and ordering staff who had stood night duty to work overtime the following morning.
An investigation found that A sexually harassed a subordinate by making remarks such as, "Don’t wear clothes like that. If you do, you could arouse the soldiers’ sexual curiosity," "Your chest is too emphasized. It looks like you’re wearing a corset," "Go find a divorced general," and "Use your looks to ask the other department to replace their warehouse radiator with our bathroom radiator."
A appealed the dismissal, but after the Committee for the Examination of Appeals of Civilian Military Employees of the Ministry of National Defense rejected his appeal, he filed suit with the administrative court.
The court acknowledged most of the military’s disciplinary grounds against A, but still found the dismissal to be excessively harsh. In other words, it held that the military had departed from and abused its discretion in imposing discipline, resulting in an unduly severe sanction on A.
The panel stated, "The defendant’s conclusion that the plaintiff violated his duty to maintain the dignity befitting a public official by engaging in sexual harassment through remarks that could cause an ordinary, average person to feel sexual humiliation or disgust is sufficiently reasonable and can be accepted."
However, the court went on to say, "All of the sexual harassment grounds among the plaintiff’s disciplinary offenses consist only of verbal sexual harassment without any physical contact. While it is clear that the remarks had the character of sexual jokes that could cause the other party to feel discomfort and disgust, they did not directly imply a sexual relationship between men and women, nor were they intended to toy with the other party for the purpose of achieving the plaintiff’s own sexual gratification." It added, "The other acts of misconduct also were not accompanied by actually imposed unfair demands or treatment, or the degree of harm suffered by staff members as a result was not particularly severe."
The court further noted, "Dismissal, while not as severe as removal from public service, is a measure that immediately strips a civilian military employee of his position, and thus entails a very high degree of disadvantage. It should therefore be imposed cautiously only when the misconduct is extremely serious, or when it is practically impossible to achieve the purposes of discipline through a lighter sanction." It continued, "Although the overall seriousness of the plaintiff’s misconduct can be assessed as substantial, each individual act of misconduct is relatively minor. The victims do earnestly wish to be separated from the plaintiff, but such separation does not necessarily require depriving him of his status as a civilian military employee; it could sufficiently be achieved through reassignment or transfer to an outside unit."

kyu0705@fnnews.com Kim Dong-gyu Reporter