In the past five years, nearly 700 cases of bullying in the workplace have been classified by the government as industrial accidents entitling the victims to compensation, including 16 cases that resulted in the victim committing suicide, government data showed Tuesday.

A total of 675 cases of workplace bullying were recognized by the authorities as industrial accidents, defined as death, injury or disease caused by factors related to a job, according to Article 2 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

South Korea started recognizing workplace bullying as a type of industrial accident in 2019, when the Labor Standards Act was revised to legally ban such behavior, and the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act stipulated it as a possible cause of job-related disease or death.

The number of recognized cases has risen every year since then -- from 20 in 2019 to 72 in 2020, 131 in 2021, 138 in 2022, and 185 in 2023, according the report compiled by Rep. Lee Yong-woo of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, based on data from the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service. From January to August of this year, 129 cases of workplace bullying were ruled to be industrial accidents.

Most compensation claims for workplace bullying as an industrial accident have been approved -- between 65 and 80 percent of them. A corresponding increase in such claims has occurred each year, rising from 25 in 2019 to 262 in 2023, followed by 207 in the first eight months of this year.

Of the claims, 29 concerned deaths supposedly caused by workplace bullying. Sixteen of those were officially recognized as deaths by industrial accident.

Data suggests that overall reports of workplace bullying -- including those apparently not deemed severe enough to file for compensation -- have also soared from an initial 2,130 in 2019. A total of 11,038 complaints of workplace bullying were reported to the ministry in 2023, and 7,720 reports were submitted between January and August of this year.

Lee said that in many cases, the employers themselves are entrusted to carry out the initial investigation, but this often leads to further damages inflicted on the employee. "In case of bullying by employers, we need to ensure that the (alleged) perpetrator cannot 'self-probe.' I will propose a revision of the Labor Standards Act to ban such self-probes by employers," Lee said.