Bill to combat 'taeoom' nursing workplace bullying introduced in National Assembly

A bill to strengthen protections against workplace bullying in nursing has been introduced in the National Assembly, prompted by the recent death of a nurse in her 20s who had suffered from "taeoom" — a term for the entrenched culture of hazing and harassment in Korean nursing workplaces.

Rep. Lee Su-jin of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee, said Thursday she had led the introduction of an amendment to the Nursing Act that would require nursing workforce support centers to provide prevention and recovery support for workplace bullying against nursing staff.

The amendment frames recurring workplace bullying in nursing not as an individual problem but as a systemic challenge requiring an institutional response, and focuses on expanding the roles of nursing workforce support centers and the government.

Under the current Nursing Act, nursing workforce support centers are tasked with encouraging long-term employment, reducing turnover and improving professional development. The amendment adds bullying prevention and victim recovery support as a new mandate for those centers.

The bill also requires that the Ministry of Health and Welfare's quinquennial survey of nursing conditions include data on human rights violations against nurses and how those violations are being addressed. While the existing survey already covers human rights violations and work-life balance, the amendment creates a separate legal basis for tracking institutional responses to such violations.

"It must not be repeated that nurses — who save lives on the front lines of medicine — give up their own lives because of workplace bullying," Lee said. "Taeoom is not a problem to be endured by individuals; it is one that the state and medical institutions must work together to eradicate."

She added that the amendment was "only a first step toward eliminating taeoom," and pledged to accelerate further legislation to improve nurses' working conditions and treatment — including mandatory education and counseling support and the establishment of appropriate nurse-to-patient ratio standards — with input from the government, medical institutions and the nursing community.