Tensions between civil servants at the Gwangju and South Jeolla offices of the Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City are escalating ahead of the city's first organizational restructuring. The dispute drew fresh attention after a Gwangju office employee who had posed as a South Jeolla office worker and posted mocking, defamatory messages on the South Jeolla Provincial Civil Servants' Union board published a public apology.
Although the union dropped its plan to file a criminal complaint against the employee, the backlash and mutual recriminations between staff at the two offices have spilled beyond internal message boards onto regional online community forums.
The Gwangju office employee, identified only as A, posted an apology on the South Jeolla union board on Saturday, acknowledging authorship of the posts and saying, "Last Thursday, I wrote three posts on this board and caused great hurt to the staff."
On Thursday, A had posted under the title "Congratulations — we have won" on the union's anonymous board, claiming that planning, personnel, budgeting and organizational functions would all be transferred to the Muan office and that employees promoted from the Muan office would be assigned to fill 150 vacancies at the Gwangju office.
The posts also included remarks such as "Gwangju employees had their existing posts guaranteed, so you have nothing to complain about" and "Just get back to work" — written as though A were a South Jeolla office civil servant.
The posts were cited in leaflets the Gwangju office union distributed alleging unfairness in the restructuring plan. After media coverage highlighted them as an example of the conflict between the two offices, the South Jeolla union announced it would pursue legal action.
In response, A posted the apology identifying himself as a Gwangju office employee, saying, "I was worried about being assigned far from home and wrote the posts out of anger, believing the situation was unfair." He added, "I apologize for stirring up conflict based on unverified information I had only heard secondhand."
The South Jeolla union accepted the apology and said it would not proceed with the legal action it had previously announced.
"The writer heard incorrect information and expressed his feelings in the wrong way," the union said. "He has surely suffered enough by now, and since he showed courage in offering a sincere apology, we ask that you accept it as we have."
The special city has agreed to form a joint labor-management consultative body on the restructuring. Even so, the conflict between civil servants at the two offices over the reorganization plan continues to deepen.
sij@heraldcorp.com
