“You’re coming to work too late. Get to work three hours earlier.” “Don’t talk back and just say yes.” “Can’t you see this (while looking at a monitor)? Do you want me to take out your eyeballs and cleanse them?”

Such horrible words are just some examples of “taeum” -- literally meaning burning someone down -- a common bullying culture among nurses where seniors bully juniors that a newcomer experienced on the third day of work at a national university hospital.

According to cases reported to lawmakers, labor groups, and nursing activists, the law banning workplace harassment took effect over a year ago, but bullying against junior nurses is still ongoing.

Rep. Kang Eun-mi of the minor opposition Justice Party, Justice Party’s Labor Headquarters, the Medical Solidarity Division of the Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union, and the Act Now Nurse held a debate on how to fight workplace harassment at medical institutions at the National Assembly on Thursday.

As the legal prohibition of workplace bullying does not apply to small clinics where fewer than five employees work, the law cannot protect junior nurses at such small medical institutions, experts said.

Rep. Kang Eun-mi of the minor opposition Justice Party, Justice Party’s Labor Headquarters, the Medical Solidarity Division of the Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union, and the Act Now Nurse held a debate how to fight workplace harassment at the National Assembly on Thursday.

Oh Jin-ho, the executive chairman of Workplace Bullying 119, a public organization that helps bullied employees, said his group received reports of bullying from various sources, including a new nurse at a national university hospital, a private clinic, and a nursing assistant.

At the national university hospital, the junior nurse lost seven kilograms of weight in just two months because of taeum culture and said every day was a nightmare.

Oh said workplace harassment seems to have been influenced by patriarchal, Confucian, military, and collective culture prevalent in Korean society, and a wrong perception that it is okay to do so.

According to cases reported to the group, there is a wide gap between genders, generations, and ranks in recognizing “gapjil,” a Korean word for abuse of power by those in superior positions against the weak.

Lee Min-hwa, an activist at the Act Now Nurse, released a survey on 1,183 nurses and nursing assistants at eight hospitals that belonged to the Medical Solidarity Division of the Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union and said bullying culture persists in hospitals.

The poll showed that 39 percent of the respondents said the enforcement of the law prohibiting workplace harassment failed to stop bullying. Harassment at hospitals occurred mostly through disregard (30 percent), rumors (22.3 percent), insult (20.5 percent), and verbal abuse (17.6 percent).

When asked what they need to eradicate bullying in the workplace, 48 percent said “improvement in conditions where bullying cannot occur.” Twenty-seven percent said, “specify the anti-bullying law and strengthen penalties.”

The survey showed that because a victim should report to the hospital that he or she is working at, not an independent institution, it is not easy to publicize the harassment issue if the perpetrator is at a managerial level, Lee said. It is also rare that a victim’s information is kept confidential at the workplace, she added.

Lee went on to say that large-scale hospitals tend to have a labor union and provide detailed instructions to keep the anti-bullying law as collective agreements.

However, nurses at mid- and small-sized hospitals do not even know how to report a harassment case.

Lee emphasized that hospitals should have an independent organization to handle workplace harassment reports, offer education to prevent bullying, share harassment cases, eliminate factors that can cause harassment such as lack of workforce, and create an environment where victims can get support.

“To make hospitals safe from workplace bullying, management should improve their awareness and willingness to change. It is also necessary to secure human and material resources and run the hospital rationally,” said Kang Kyeong-hwa, a professor at the College of Nursing of Hallym University.

Factors causing workplace bullying could exist across an organization, Kang said.

A hospital should have a commission that has independence and authority guaranteed to protect medical workers from workplace harassment, she went on to say.

Such a commission should reveal the results of investigations on harassment cases unless there is a particular reason. The hospital should immediately implement follow-up measures, and the head of the medical institution should be responsible for the follow-up measures, she added.

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