The Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union (KHMU) is advocating for ‘labor rights guarantee negotiations’ to ensure fundamental rights for all healthcare workers, regardless of their workplace level. Until now, efforts to improve working conditions have primarily benefited those working in university hospitals and large clinical centers. KHMU is now pushing to secure essential rights across the entire sector, including a basic wage guarantee, protections for pregnant workers, and paid sick leave.
Securing these rights would mark a significant step forward in a work environment plagued by an excessive reliance on overtime. According to KHMU’s latest membership survey, 61% of the 40,700 respondents reported working overtime daily. Among them, nearly half were not adequately compensated, and 67% were considering leaving their jobs due to this issue.
No particular group is spared the burden of overtime work, which compensates for a chronic worker shortage. Even pregnant workers, especially those in large public and private hospitals, are asked to take on additional workloads. Among 5,795 workers who had been pregnant in the last three years, close to 40% worked overtime during their pregnancies, and 19% took on night shifts. KHMU warned that the reliance on overtime is so high that a quarter of these workers felt they could not freely decide on pregnancy without considering their colleagues’ or supervisors’ opinions.
Grievances over staffing levels and working conditions in South Korea’s healthcare sector have been ongoing. In July 2023, KHMU coordinated nationwide industrial action to demand better staffing ratios and recognition for health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, a prolonged strike by trainee doctors disrupted parts of the health system. While the public generally supports the KHMU’s calls for more employment and investment in public healthcare, actions organized by doctors have faced criticism from patients and other health workers. Critics argue that all actions in the sector must prioritize the public interest rather than specific, “vested interests,” as seen in the case of the doctors, according to KHMU.
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