“Gapjil” (갑질) — abusing the upper hand

Short version: 갑질 is the abuse of a position of power — a boss humiliating staff, a client bullying a supplier, a customer screaming at a cashier. The word comes from contract language, where 갑 is “party A,” the side with the money and the upper hand.

What the subtitle saysHe’s abusing his power.

What was actually saidHe’s pulling rank because he’s the one who pays — and he knows they can’t push back.

Where the word comes from

Korean contracts traditionally name the two parties 갑 and 을, from 甲 and 乙, the first two of the ten “heavenly stems” used for ordering things. 갑 is usually the one paying (the client, the landlord, the employer) and 을 the one being paid. So 갑 came to mean “the party with power” and 을 “the party without.”

–질 is a native suffix that turns a noun into an activity, often a disapproving one. It appears in 도둑질 (thieving), 손가락질 (pointing fingers, blaming), and 삽질 (digging with a shovel — and, as slang, pointless work). 갑질 is “doing 갑“: behaving like the one in charge, in the ugliest way.

What counts as 갑질

A manager making juniors run personal errands.
A customer demanding a clerk kneel to apologise.
A large company squeezing a small supplier with last-minute changes.
An apartment resident verbally abusing the building’s security guard.
A landlord entering a tenant’s home whenever they like.

The common thread is that the victim cannot easily fight back. That is what separates 갑질 from ordinary rudeness.

How it became a national word

The term existed before, but it spread explosively in the mid-2010s after a series of widely reported incidents involving executives and powerful families — including a 2014 airline incident that made international news. Each case became a public argument about hierarchy and how people with money treat people without it.

The word was so central to those debates that Korea’s English-language press began using “gapjil” untranslated, with a short gloss, rather than searching for an English equivalent.

The 을 side

Word	Meaning
을	The weaker party
을의 설움	The sorrows of being 을
을질	Joking reversal: the weaker side pushing back
병	丙, “party C” — someone even lower down the chain

People describe themselves as 을 at work with a mix of resignation and humour. “I’m 을 in this relationship” can even be said about dating, meaning “I’m the one who cares more.”

Korea passed a workplace harassment law in 2019 that covers much of what people mean by 갑질 at work. The word still covers much more than the law does — customers, landlords, families.

What subtitles do

“Abuse of power,” “bullying,” “throwing his weight around.” These are right in meaning. What is lost is the contract frame: the idea that some people are 갑 simply because of where they sit, and that everyone in the scene knows their own position. When a character mutters 갑질 하네, they are describing a whole social structure in two syllables.