Dear OIG inspector and whom it may concern, My name is Nam Hoon Kim and I’m a former employee of US Embassy Seoul who recently resigned in September 2012. I worked for US Embassy as an electrician in Facility Management office for 8 years and I love the United States of America and US people and was proud to be an employee of US government. Even though I love everything about this job the reason why I decided to resign is because of my direct superior officer’s constant abusive language, harassment, and tired of being his personal secretary. I feel so desperate and wretched about writing this letter. I assure you that I have no intension of hankering after any distinctions, but I just want to let you know the truth about what goes on in US Embassy Seoul FM section and hoping this will help other people who are suffering as this moment. Therefore this kind of infelicity wouldn’t happen again to other people. The maintenance supervisor Mr. TY Kim is the one I want to tell about. He is a 45 years old and has been working for US Embassy for about 10 years and below him there are about 23 FM shop maintenance crews working under his supervision. I’m not sure if you are familiar with Korean culture but the Korean people are very courteous to each other and they treat others with manners all the time and we use polite expression especially to elders. But Mr. TY Kim always choose to use harsh words such as cursing when he gives work orders to us even to the elderly workers. Every worker has experienced his harassment and doesn’t like what goes on here but he has the authority over us so we can’t say anything to him because we’re afraid that we’ll lose our job. But this is just a beginning of his terrifying violence. The US Embassy Seoul gives out an award with prize money to every hard working people every year, he will take advantage of this. You should select people who have worked hard for that year but he selects a person who report to him about other worker’s fault and flatterer. Many people have been doing this for him but even these people have turned against him because of his harsh attitude towards us. At this moment, you might ask me why we keep taking these kinds of harassments but not report it to HR or our American superior. It’s because we’re so afraid that something will go wrong and just lose the job. For example, whenever something goes wrong, they (Mr. TY Kim and Mr. Ha, senior maintenance supervisor) will yell at us first and ask for GLID to be confiscated. It is a kind of threat to us that they will just fire us even without going through a proper discharge regulation from the job. I assume they do this to us because we can’t speak good English and they think we can’t go forward with our concern and complains to the American officers. I for myself can’t speak good English, so I hired a translator to translate this letter with my own expense, because you ought to know what really goes on in FM section. Now I would like to tell you how TY Kim and his senior supervisor harassed me even after work hours and his absurdity. - During the year of 2005 to 2006, we did roof tile replacement work on Embassy housings and market value of each roof tile was around 800 ~ 900 Korean won, but they tricked the Facility Manager(FM) and told it was 2600 ~ 2800 won each and kept the profit for themselves with a contractor. - The new Embassy housing make-ready contractors are selected every 3~5 years, but they trick the FM by just changing only the name of the company and deals some other secret contract within themselves for black money. This may seem a just assumption but all FM shop crews know for a fact that this has been going on for a long years. - Some of the FM shop crew took some parts and materials to a local market for their pocket money, so we reported to Mr. TY Kim & Mr. Ha(Senior supervisor), but they didn’t take any action and just asked us “Do you have any proof?” and said tell no one about this. This kind of incident took place about 3 times but they ignored them every time. Why? Not sure why, but there must be a good reason behind it. I have the pictures to back up this story. - TY Kim told me many times to drive him to department store on working hours on US Embassy government vehicle so he can shop there while I wait for him driving around in circles wasting gas, because there are no parking space available and he will take hours. The next day he will tell me to go back to return some of the items for a refund because he’s too lazy to go there himself and all of this took place within regular working hours!! - He even harassed me even after working hours. He will just call me up at middle of the night to go to the local night clubs to pick up ladies with his fellow workers and he wants me to be there to play his assistant so he can look like a man of means in front of the ladies that he’s trying to pick up. Every time and many times whenever he has done this, I really felt violated and my pride was wounded. Not only that, he will make me stay until 3 or 4 am in the morning until the night club closes, then I only could have 2~3 hours of sleep until the office-going hour. I really felt tired and was almost fainted during working hours one time. - TY had a BMW it was a leased car and he did not pay speeding violations fine so DMV made an order of attachment on it. He ordered me again to be his personal secretary on this matter, so I had to resolve this matter for him during working hours and even giving up my personal leaves. I was so devastated. - TY also had many affairs with many mistresses and whenever he got caught to his wife he used me as an excuse and told me to lie for him to his wife for his alibis. He even gave my phone number to one of his mistress to contact me whenever he can’t be contacted with her because of his wife’s suspicion. I really felt bad and sorry about this because he was forcing me to lie to another human-being as a human-being. I had to lie to his wife that my parents has passed-away to cover for him even my parents are well and alive!! - TY ordered me again to do some electrical installation of his wife’s beauty shop one day, it was a holiday. He told me that he had no money for this work and ordered me to take materials from the Embassy property and force me to steal from the Embassy! At that time I was so afraid of him and I had no choice but to follow his instruction. I regret it very deeply and I feel sorry that I couldn’t say no to him at that time. - Year of 2011, TY’s father in law has passed away; he ordered one of the make-ready contractor to send deck with a garland with his name on it. But later he forced them to send two more. The contractor had no choice but to follow his order. I think forcing & receiving something from the contractor is a bribery case. This kind of dishonesty should not be tolerated in US Embassy Seoul. - After TY’s father in law’s funeral, he again called me up privately. He brought a whole bunch of antique coins and said that was a memento of his father in law. He told me to find a place where he can sell them for a good price. I was so shocked that he had no decency over his father in law, but at the same time I had no choice but to follow his order once again. He sold them for 15,000 US dollars and kept the most just himself without notifying even to his wife. Now I like to tell you some of the unfairly conduct went on in FM Department. Once a year a senior maintenance supervisor will select a group of people who will get an award and prize money for the good work they have done through the year. He should pick out the hard working personals for this but instead, they will pick out their favorite. And whoever gotten the award money, they have to give up the half of the money to them without a motion. We all should get a equal chance of opportunity for oversea FSI training that is provided by US government, but instead of giving equal chance, the only group of officers will go for oversea training. They so call it “Awarded Vacation for Special People Only” not training. Whenever a new employee gets hired, they say to him that he got this job because of them and he should treat everyone in FM (about 30 people) with meal. They do force this to that individual in a way and he can’t really say no to it. Otherwise he will have a hard time or even get fired. Whenever someone try to quit and tells their dissatisfaction towards supervisors, they will threat us that they will not give a good reference to the company we are moving onto, so we have no choice again but to shut our lips. This is one of the strong reason why I am writing a complain letter to you because we have no one here to tell this to or even will listen to us. I decided myself to escape from this hell hole and told senior supervisor Mr. Ha, Kap Yul and asked for two weeks notice just like it says in US Embassy employment regulation, but he denied it and force me to sign for immediate discharge. He told me if I don’t sign on it, he will just fire me and spread bad rumors about me. I had no choice again but to sign it and escaped that hell hole. Sir, I really had and still have so much proud being a part of US Embassy Seoul, but I am devastated by their unfairly action toward me and I feel so destroyed right now even thinking of filling a law suit against it. But before I do that, I like to let you know what I had to go through and my colleagues are still going through. Please review this devastated letter and please help us in a way you can. I thank you greatly for reading this letter and hope to hear from you if possible. Thank you so much again sir. Respectfully yours, Kim, Nam Hoon
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:36:03 +0000
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