In Korea, the hierarchy in age and position is a huge importance. When you meet someone older than you, you have to show them all respect and use jondemal (존대말) which is the formal language in Korean. This societal norm eve applies to someone even one year older than you. In Korea, everyone gets older at new years eve, so people determine age by the year you were born and not when your birthday passes. Because of this norm, there are a lot of problems in middle schools and high schools. Age is important factor in this, but position also has the same norm. You have to respect someone in higher position than you even when they are younger than you.
Usually, these respect to elders are something like doing their requests, not denying their requests, and not saying anything bad at difficult requests. These requests could be something like getting them water or anything like going out to the store and getting them their favorite bread. This is why working under a strict boss is extremely stressful as these requests could occur everyday.
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