Broadcaster Sayuri Fujita is confessing her experience of sexual harassment through her YouTube channel. video capture
While results showed that more than half of work-related suicides (industrial accidents) among office workers were due to workplace harassment and overwork, Japanese broadcaster Sayuri Fujita (44) revealed that she had been sexually harassed by a senior singer about 10 years ago.
Sayuri said through the YouTube channel she runs, “A dozen years ago, when I didn’t have a manager, I appeared on an MBC program. The filming of the program was so long all day long, so I was drinking coffee at a coffee shop on the first floor.” “At that time, I was drinking coffee at a coffee shop on the first floor,” he said. “I happened to have coffee with a very old celebrity. But he said, ‘Sayuri, your skin is not good. You have a lot of acne on your skin,'” he recalled.
He continued, “I was surprised at that time. Japanese people don’t comment much on their appearance. Still, I thought it was because they were really worried about their skin, so I answered, ‘I need to go to the dermatologist.'”
However, the celebrity senior continued to make problematic comments. Sayuri said, “I thought the story would end there, but (the celebrity) said, ‘Sayuri, you’re Japanese. Japanese people are not honest in the opinion of Koreans. I’ve never seen an honest person. Answer the question now. XX “I asked, ‘How many people did you do it with?’” he confessed.
Broadcaster Sayuri and her son Zen Fujita. Instagram capture
Regarding this, Sayuri said, “I thought I heard wrong. He suddenly asked a strange question and I couldn’t understand it, so I said, ‘What?’. I was embarrassed. I never thought he would ask such a question.” The ‘senior’ celebrity said, “So Japanese people are not honest. You have to be honest,” and she asked the same question slowly three times.
He said he was scared of such an unpleasant situation. Sayuri recalled, “At that time, I was more scared than angry. I was so scared of being in that space that I just laughed. Actually, I should have been angry, but I was so young and that person was a senior.”
He said, “Even now, I get angry when I see him singing on TV. I was so sad and angry when I saw him say this to a woman of the same age as my daughter. I couldn’t bear to tell that story to anyone, but it was so hard. “But because people like that keep appearing on TV, I still have resentment in my heart,” he added.
Previously, Sayuri gave birth to her son Zen Fujita in November 2020 through sperm donation from a Western man in Japan.
Meanwhile, the ‘2022 National Assembly Debate on the Status of Industrial Suicides’ was held on the 13th by the labor rights group Workplace Gapjil 119 and the Office of Representative Yong Hye-in of the Basic Income Party. According to Yangji Lee, a certified labor attorney at Life Labor Law Firm who was a presenter at the event, among the 39 reasons for suicide for which industrial accidents were approved, ‘bullying and sexual harassment in the workplace’ was the most common at 33%. ‘Overwork’ followed at 26%, ‘disciplinary and personnel action’ at 21%, and ‘assault’ at 5%. This is the result of an analysis of all occupational disease certificates related to suicide and industrial accidents surveyed by the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service in 2022.
The proportion of workplace bullying among the number of suicide industrial accident claims increased from 20% before the enforcement of the ‘Workplace Bullying Prohibition Act’ to 27% after the enforcement. Still, the number of industrial accident applications for suicide (including public officials and faculty) was lower than the number of cases classified by the National Police Agency as ‘suicide due to workplace or work-related problems.’ The suicide rate compared to National Police Agency statistics was 24% in 2018, 16% in 2019, 23% in 2020, 37% in 2021, and 36% in 2022. Experts point out that although the overall rate itself is increasing, it is still not possible to claim that it is a concealed or industrial accident.
