South Korean labour laws cap working hours to 52 a week: 40 standard hours with up to 12 for overtime.
The pressure on workers, especially young workers, can be intense in South Korea, which has a shrinking, aging population with one of the world’s lowest fertility rates.
But over the past few months, some influential South Korean companies have told executives to work longer hours, in some cases telling them to come to the office six days a week. Some people in South Korean business are predicting that lower-ranked employees and managers at smaller companies will feel pressure to follow suit.
In South Korea, the five-day workweek is only a generation old, introduced by labour laws in 2004, starting with the public sector and larger companies before spreading to smaller firms. A 52-hour legal limit on the workweek is also relatively new: It was introduced in 2018, a reduction from 68 hours per week.
At HD Hyundai Oilbank, the refinery and gas station unit of an industrial conglomerate, about 40 executives started coming to the office on weekends in recent weeks to “respond to the crisis caused by sluggish business conditions”, according to a company representative. HD Hyundai Oilbank’s sales and profit dropped sharply in 2023 because of falling oil prices.
Labour groups claim the “crisis” and “emergency” measures are mostly for show. “There is a cultural mindset here that the longer someone works, the better the outcome,” said Lee Sang Yoon, a policy deputy director at the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, one of the largest labor groups in the nation. “This is outdated.”
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