Public firm worker fired after spending most of work hours on YouTube, running paid fortune-telling service

A public enterprise employee who spent most of his working hours watching YouTube and ran a paid fortune-telling service during office hours has been dismissed after an internal audit caught the misconduct.

According to documents obtained from the Korea Housing and Urban Guarantee Corporation (HUG) by People Power Party lawmaker Kim Mi-ae of the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, HUG convened a personnel committee last April and dismissed the employee, identified only as A, on grounds including dereliction of duty.

A was found to have accessed YouTube on his work computer every day during office hours from January last year through January this year, accounting for more than 80 percent of his total working time.

A also left his workstation without authorization and used the company fitness facility during work hours, while improperly claiming compensatory leave for doing so.

Most notably, A set up a paid fortune-telling consultation site on a major web portal under someone else's name and conducted paid sessions via chat during work hours.

He earned more than 3 million won ($2,210) through the fortune-telling service.

HUG determined that A's misconduct had been carried out over an extended period in multiple forms, fundamentally undermining the corporation's trust in him. The company also concluded that there was little prospect of improvement and proceeded with the dismissal.

Meanwhile, HUG also dealt with a sexual misconduct case involving a senior executive earlier this year.

In January, standing director B was referred to prosecutors on charges of sexual harassment through abuse of workplace authority, and HUG dismissed him after determining that the conduct was serious and constituted gross negligence.