Extreme Choice After Abusive Resident Complaints... Court Rules "Work-Related Injury"

[Asia Economy Reporter Seongpil Cho] A court ruling has recognized that an apartment manager who took an extreme step after suffering from residents' complaints should be acknowledged as having a work-related injury.

According to the legal community on the 18th, the Seoul Administrative Court Administrative Division 3 (Presiding Judge Hwanwoo Yoo) ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the family of manager A against the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service, seeking cancellation of the denial of survivor benefits and funeral expenses. The court stated, "Some of the complaints received by the deceased before death were difficult to consider as reasonable complaints," and added, "It appears that work-related stress, combined with personal issues, worsened depressive symptoms, leading to the extreme choice."

Mr. A worked as the manager of a public rental apartment supplied by Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) and received continuous complaints from resident B for one year and eight months. Most of the complaints were difficult for Mr. A to resolve easily, such as noise between floors and blind spots in the parking lot CCTV. There was even an occasion when he was publicly reprimanded and verbally abused for over an hour. On the day he received the verbally abusive complaint, Mr. A sent a message to the company representative saying, "I am physically exhausted and will find it difficult to come to work from tomorrow," and two days later, he took his own life near his home.

The family claimed that Mr. A died due to a work-related injury caused by work-related stress and requested survivor benefits and funeral expenses. However, the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service did not accept this, citing difficulty in recognizing a significant causal relationship between the death and work. When Mr. A's family received the same judgment from the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Reexamination Committee, they filed this lawsuit.