II. Concerned Staff of KRC Demanded DJ Yoon’s Resignation as Board Chair, and DJ Yoon and Board Members Continue to Retaliate Against Them
In late September, current and former KRC staff known as the Concerned Staff of KRC drafted a workplace complaint about DJ Yoon Board President including unpaid overtime wages, abusive treatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, and creating a hostile and toxic work environment. When the Concerned Staff presented the complaint to the Human Resources (HR) Committee of the Board, one of the committee members explained away the complaints as “cultural difference,” expressed reluctance in sharing this with the rest of the Board, and ultimately declined to confront DJ because it might hurt his feelings.
Due to the Board Committee’s inaction, on October 1, 2019, the Concerned Staff emailed the workplace complaint letter with 11 personal accounts to DJ Yoon (and cc’ing KRC management), demanding that DJ resign from his position as Board President. The complaint letters included accounts of over-working female staff to exhaustion, lack of accountability as a supervisor, pressuring undocumented community members to disclose their immigration status publicly, punishing staff for whistleblowing on his friends, and sexual statements that DJ made to female and male staff at KRC. Given the personal and sensitive nature of the letters, we requested that he not share our letters publicly out of respect for our privacy and consistent with HR practices.
However, after we emailed DJ, he immediately retaliated against the Concerned Staff. Despite our explicit request to DJ that our letters not be shared externally, DJ forwarded our private statements to his wife, EunSook Lee (who shared it with an unaffiliated staff person), to other family members, to former KRC interns, and to community members without our consent, in violation of our privacy.
The following morning, Angela Oh responded to our letters by criticizing us, gaslighting us, and victim-blaming us for demanding DJ’s resignation. Her email stated that our actions were “mean and hurtful.” She trivialized what we wrote; assumed we were ignorant about the history of KRC; claimed we lacked nuance about racism, sexism, class inequality, immigration status, etc; questioned our motives; continued to blame the Executive Team for the “financial crisis;” and made DJ to be a martyr of the movement. As a Board member, she made clear that she stood with DJ.
In the ensuing weeks, DJ Yoon continued to actively retaliate against the Concerned Staff for our letters. He and other Board members enabled Young Ran and select staff (“Young Ran’s group”) to file false and baseless complaints about the Executive Team that also targeted specific Concerned Staff. In a follow-up email sent to Young Ran’s group, DJ thanked them for their complaints, called the Concerned Staff the “rotting flesh” of KRC that needed to be “cut away,” and commended Young Ran’s group for “slapping” us into our senses. [DJ’s email and English translation]
Additionally, DJ’s wife, EunSook Lee, a foundation director and former NAKASEC ED, ghostwrote a workplace complaint for another staff, targeting a female Concerned Staff member, slutshaming her, sexually harassing her, and falsely accusing her of getting special treatment. Again, this was clear retaliation by DJ and his wife against this Concerned Staff for writing a letter demanding DJ’s resignation.
In addition to retaliating against Concerned Staff, DJ Yoon, Angela Oh, and Inbo Sim attempted to frame, harass, and push out the Executive Team who they erroneously thought were spearheading the Concerned Staff. Inbo Sim and DJ Yoon repeatedly accused Jonathan of fraud (keeping two books), and continues to spread this vicious lie to KRC staff and Board members without any evidence. They only momentarily backed off of the accusations after realizing that the Board and John Choi, Board Treasurer, would be implicated if their false accusations gained traction. Even though an independent investigation exonerated Jonathan, Inbo Sim continues to spread false information.
According to Jenny Seon’s former client, Angela Oh and DJ’s wife, EunSook Lee, traveled a total of four hours to meet with this former client so that they could find “dirt” on Jenny and have grounds to fire her. They could not find anything. This is not Angela or EunSook’s first time scouring to find incriminating information about Jenny through her former clients in order to damage her professional reputation.
It is disappointing to see the extreme lengths that the Board will go and the harm they are willing to inflict to protect the ego of one man.
III. Concerned Staff Decided to Unionize in Response to the Board’s Retaliation
