This image is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]
This image is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]

A 27-year-old nursing recruit who endured nearly three years of "taeum" — a form of severe workplace bullying endemic to the nursing profession — died by suicide in a case that has only recently come to light.

According to an MBC report Monday, Kang, who became a nurse three years ago and was 27 at the time of her death, was subjected to taeum from senior colleagues almost from her first day on the job. She took her own life earlier this month.

Taeum, derived from the phrase "burn until the soul turns to ash," refers to the entrenched practice in which senior nurses harshly bully and berate new recruits under the guise of training.

Kang was forced to endure a sunbae's verbal abuse in front of coworkers — including the threat, "I can burn you until you kill yourself" — and later broke down in tears recounting the ordeal to her mother.

The depth of her despair is laid bare in her diary.

<style ref="s1">"They don't acknowledge my greetings. Even so, I kept greeting them diligently, afraid something bad would happen if I didn't."</style>

<style ref="s2">"Every day feels like hell. But if I quit, I can't pay my monthly rent — so I have to keep throwing myself back into that hell."</style>

Her family said Kang kept trying to encourage herself to the end, telling her mother: "Maybe if I work a little harder and treat my sunbae more warmly, things will change. Mom, I'll hold on just a little longer. I'll keep going."

Kang ultimately resigned in April last year. She then filed a workplace harassment complaint with the Ministry of Employment and Labor, but the investigation found harassment substantiated against only one of the three people she had named.

The hospital issued only a "reprimand" to that one employee, and when Kang learned that the other perpetrators remained at work without consequence, she took her own life.

The hospital said it had offered Kang a transfer to a different department, which she declined, and that it had fully complied with all corrective measures ordered by the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

Over half of nurses report rights violations — 70% gave up seeking redress

Meanwhile, Kang's case is at least the fourth known death linked to taeum since 2018.

A survey of 788 nurses at medical institutions nationwide, conducted by the Korean Nurses Association and released last October, found that 50.8 percent of respondents had experienced a human rights violation in the preceding year. Of those, 71.8 percent said they had taken no action, citing fear of exposure and retaliation.

Verbal abuse was the most commonly reported form of harm, cited by 81.0 percent of victims (multiple responses allowed), followed by workplace harassment and gapjil at 69.3 percent. Sexual harassment and sexual assault accounted for 13 percent of cases.

Senior nurses were identified as the most common perpetrators at 53.3 percent, followed by doctors at 52.8 percent and patients or their guardians at 43.0 percent.

The association noted that most incidents — 79.0 percent — occurred in wards and other spaces shared with patients and their families, underscoring how normalized rights violations have become in clinical settings.


betterj@heraldcorp.com