Flight attendant's online post reignites debate on workplace bullying in airline industry

(123rf)

In South Korea, the airline industry culture can be as strict as the military, or even more so.

A recent post on Blind, an anonymous online forum for company employees, a person claiming to work for Korean Air has sparked a debate on workplace bullying, highlighting the irrational hierarchy among flight attendants.

According to the post, a junior flight attendant was berated by a senior flight attendant for putting a blanket over her lap during a flight while on "standby," a position that junior crews customarily take, sitting on crew seats facing passengers. The junior attendant was outcasted by other flight attendants to the extent that she had to file a workplace bullying report.

This issue has divided senior and junior flight attendants. Senior crew members called the junior flight attendant unprofessional for covering up with a blanket while being visible to passengers. Those supporting this idea argued that "professions that wear uniforms should not" indulge in personal needs, while the junior crews condemned the senior crew members for being inhumane.

Former flight attendants shared their stories of being sent on errands and being physically abused by their seniors.

Such behavior, which is dubbed "over the sky discipline" in the domestic airline industry, is a form of workplace "gapjil." Gapjil refers to harassment by superiors within the workplace in the name of seniority.

Some see this harassment culture disappearing, as airlines bring in an evaluation system where junior flight attendants also get to evaluate their senior coworkers.

This kind of bullying culture exists in other professions as well. "Taewoom," which translates to burning, is used to describe the bullying culture among nurses. The term refers to "bullying until it burns junior nurses' souls." The reasoning behind an overly strict culture is that nurses need to remain vigilant, since any mistakes nurses make can hurt the health of patients. Nonetheless, such cultures were heavily criticized when a nurse took her own life after struggling with taewoom in 2021.

By Park Soong-joo(soongjoopark@heraldcorp.com)