Ujan Bajracharya

Freshman Composition 

ENG 110 11/11/23

Overworking in South Korea 

Would you ever want to work 120 hours a week for weeks without a break? This is a future possibility for the people in South Korea. Overworking in East Asia, specifically in South Korea and Japan has been an issue that’s been having a devastating effect on its populations, since it causes stress, which goes on to start diseases, and in worst case scenarios could bring about death. Japan and South Korea are the most workaholic countries. According to Su-Hyun Lee and Tiffany May from the New York Times South Koreans “put in 240 more work hours per year than Americans do — or, put another way, an extra month of eight-hour workdays.”

Overworking in South Korea and Japan has been a part of their culture, and they take pride in hard work. According to Jake Kwon and Alexandra Field from CNN, who are both respected in their fields and have been reporting on these issues in Asia, “Korea is a society that demands overworking. They demand you to work long hours. They think that working long means working well and being productive” This results in people working for long hours, giving up their free time, and sacrificing themselves to work for their companies and their employers. This culture that they have makes it so that it is expected that the employees will keep you for overtime and expect you to work long hours even through overtime reaching almost 60 hours each week, and since it is normalized in society so much people are just expected to do this in and out every day, every week which results to stress being added every single day and keeps being added on to the already big stress load.

Why does overworking happen in these specific countries? In South Korea, overworking is said to come from the results of the Korean War. The Korean War was fought between the North and the South in which the North was supported by China, while the South was supported by the UN. According to “Both North and South Korea were shattered by the destructive three-year Korean War that left upward of two million dead and cities and towns in ruin. Already poor prior to the war, neither country had very promising prospects for the future.” For South Korea to become what it is today, it had to drastically change themselves. The change came from financial support from the United States and through the first president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee. Who ruled in an authoritarian way but it was because of this that South Korea was pulled out of poverty, and according to Su-Hyun Lee and Tiffany May from the New York Times, who are both very much into covering news from Japan and South Korea, “Pride in hard work helped propel the once-rural country out of the ashes of war and transform it into an economic power.” The war had a huge effect on why South Korea has become the workaholic country that it is today, coming out of the war as a rural country forcing citizens to work hard and coming out in the modern day as an economic powerhouse, even overtaking Japan in overworking even though overworking was said to come from the Japanese term “Karoshi” meaning death from overwork. For Japan, the reason for overworking has been something that has always been a cultural norm, but however, World War 2 might’ve had an effect on the increased overworking because war leads to a need for rapid reconstruction of its economy, which might be another reason as to why it has increased to these unhealthy levels.

What are the negative effects? Some of the negative effects are that it’s causing stress and stress-related diseases, which are cardiovascular diseases mostly. Meaning it’s increasing the rate of a stroke or a heart attack happening. Diseases aren’t the only negative effects that extreme overworking causes, it also causes deaths and suicides. According to the NY Times, “The South Korean police say work pressure plays a role in more than 500 suicides a year, out of a national total of about 14,000.” This goes to show the amount of deaths that suicides have in South Korea, out of a total of 14,000 deaths per year average, there’s 500 that comes from suicides. Which is about 3.85% of the total deaths that occur in South Korea in an average year. South Korea ranked 12th in the world for most suicides in 2019. Work related diseases and loneliness that this schedule causes since everyone’s just working most of the time and can’t socialize causes these rates to be higher. 

What’s currently happening and what do the people want? The current situation is that the 69-hour work week is still being considered by the government. This was so that if the extended work weeks law does get passed people will be more likely to create a flexible schedule for themselves to plan things for them and their family or friends. But it has been receiving “widespread backlash from labor unions and young workers” according to Vice. This is receiving a heavy backlash from young workers and labor unions because they know due to the work norms in South Korea, they’ll be exploited to work the full 69 hours. 

President Yoon Sekyeol of South Korea said when campaigning on a pro-business platform once said, “People should be allowed to work 120 hours a week” He then contradicted himself and took back his statement and then said,  “I think working more than 60 hours a week is too much” possibly to keep public in favor. He also says, “The government needed to communicate with the public by listening closely to various opinions of workers, especially the opinions of the MZ(Millennial and Gen Z) generation”. This shows some progress is being made to undo and push back the longer working hours since that is not something the people want in South Korea because it is already an issue that is causing deaths and diseases, overworking causes people’s lives to be filled with just work and their quality of lives diminish, causing people to strive for free time and for them to be given rest and enjoy what life has to offer to them. 

Why was the intended reason for the increased work week proposed? What it was supposed to accomplish? The intended reason for the increased work week was to “help solve the fertility crisis currently plaguing South Korea, which has the world’s lowest birth rate.” According to Vice, this was because the government thought that increased maximum working hours meant they could make the normal working hours more flexible for people to build schedules around, but since South Korea is a workaholic country and its social norms make it so its easy to exploit these maximums to make people work through their full overtimes. Another reason was according to Katie Nadworny, a respected writer with experience in Asia and its conflicts working with and writing for National Geographic, British Broadcasting Corporation, Public Radio International, and other news sources, “in response to business voices lobbying for greater flexibility”, this said people are still working through full overtime due to the work culture in South Korea meaning that even if the extended work week was supposed to be a positive thing because the government wanted to let people be flexible with their schedule building, but due to the work norm in South Korea they would most likely be going through the full overtime as much as the employers can exploit the workers.  

In conclusion, Japan and South Korea are very workaholic countries, whose workaholic culture comes from the result of war, specifically the Korean War and World War 2, or just their cultural norms and what they value in themselves. These workaholic environments make it so that they are easily exploited and taken advantage of, many times working through full overtime. All of these overworking causes stress and stress-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, which makes the chances of having a stroke or heart attack very high. This causes deaths from the disease and death through suicides. The issue doesn’t end here either. The proposed deal in South Korea was to extend the work week by an additional 17 hours to bring the work week from a 52-hour work week into a 69-hour work week.  This inevitably makes the already terrible situation with lots of negative effects into a devastating situation with even worse results which could lead to the already existing problems worsening or bring about new problems to add to the list of issues that overworking brings to these countries.

Works Cited

Ikegami, Kazunori, et al. 

“Relationship among Work–Treatment Balance, Job Stress, and Work Engagement in Japan: A Cross-Sectional Study.” Industrial Health, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, 1 Feb. 2023, doi.org/10.2486/indhealth.2021-0250.

Kwon, Jake, and Alexandra Field. “South Koreans Are Working Themselves to Death. Can They 

Get Their Lives Back?” CNN, Cable News Network, 5 Nov. 2018 www.cnn.com/2018/11/04/asia/korea-working-hours-intl/index.html.

Lee, Su-hyun, and Tiffany May. “Go Home, South Korea Tells Workers, as Stress Takes Its Toll.” 

The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 July 2018 www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/world/asia/south-korea-overwork-workweek.html.

Nadworny, Katie. “Proposal to Raise Workweek in South Korea to 69 Hours Rejected.”

SHRM, SHRM, 20 June 2023,www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/global-hr/pages/south-korea-workweek-69-hou

rs.aspx#:~:text=Another%20incentive%20for%20raising%20the,voices%20lobbying%20fo r%20greater%20flexibility.