Still, in this deeply patriarchal society, sons in many families still get the lion’s shares of inheritances from parents, and in workplaces, women are often treated like temporary employees expected to quit once they marry.

The World Economic Forum ranks the country 118th of 144 in terms of gender equality. Men earn 37 percent more than women on average, a gap in wages that puts South Korea at the bottom of member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (The gap is 18 percent in the United States and 26 percent in Japan.)

As elsewhere, sexual abuse victims often remain quiet for fear of losing their jobs or being ostracized in the workplace. In 2009, a young actress named Jang Ja-yeon committed suicide, leaving behind a handwritten note saying she had been forced to provide sexual favors to entertainment executives.

But as the #MeToo movement has erupted around the world, complaints in South Korea have trickled out. In November, a 25-year-old employee of the furniture maker Hanssem posted a detailed account of being sexually assaulted by male colleagues. In another episode, nurses at Hallym University Medical Center in Anyang, south of Seoul, said they were told to dance in skimpy outfits at work-related events.

A broader outcry and lasting reforms, however, have been slow to materialize. A tipping point appears to have come last month when a prosecutor named Seo Ji-hyeon asserted that a senior male prosecutor groped her at a funeral in 2010.

Writing in an internal web log for prosecutors, she said she had been so deeply traumatized that she had a miscarriage.

“I wanted to speak out but many discouraged me, saying: ‘It will be a piece of cake for them to turn you into a fool. If you speak up now, they will make you look like an inefficient, problematic, weirdo prosecutor,’ ” she wrote in her posting. “They said, ‘Keep your mouth shut and go back to your work.’ ”