South Korea U-Turns On 69-Hour Working Week After Youth Backlash

South Korea’s government has been forced to rethink a planned rise in working hours after a backlash from younger people who said the move would destroy their work-life balance and put their health at risk. The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines. But protests from the country’s millennials and generation z prompted the president, Yoon Suk-yeol, to order government agencies to reconsider the measure and “communicate better with the public, especially with generation z and millennials”, his press secretary, Kim Eun-hye, said.

“The core of [Yoon’s] labour market policy is to protect the rights and interests of underprivileged workers, such as the MZ generation, workers not in a union and those working in small and medium-sized businesses,” Kim said, according to the Korea Herald. Yoon, a conservative who is seen as pro-business, had supported the raise to give employers greater flexibility. Union leaders, however, had said it would force people to work longer hours, in a country already known for its punishing workplace culture. The plan has also been criticised as out of step with other major economies, including Britain, where dozens of companies last year trialled a four-day week that campaigners said resulted in similar or better productivity and increased staff wellbeing. “South Koreans worked an average of 1,915 hours in 2021 — that’s 199 hours more than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development average, according to the most recent OECD employment outlook, and 566 hours more than workers in Germany,” notes the report.