Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Contactless holiday reduces stress: survey
A table for ancestral rite for Chuseok / Korea Times file
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Koreans are experiencing less than they used to have due to family gatherings during traditional holidays, as the number of get-togethers with relatives has decreased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey showed, Friday.
According to the survey of 3,033 adults conducted by recruiting platform Saramin, 40.2 percent of respondents said they felt stressed about the upcoming Chuseok holiday, the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, which runs from Sept. 20 to 22 this year.
This is down 18.1 percentage points from a survey conducted ahead of Seollal, the Lunar New Year holiday, in January last year before the COVID-19 outbreak erupted here.
Seventy-seven percent said their stress level was down because “there is a good reason to avoid gatherings with relatives.” The percentage of people saying this was higher among women, 81.9 percent, than men, 72.4 percent.
The reasons for being under holiday stress differed depending on marital status.
When multiple answers were allowed, 52.7 percent of unmarried people said nagging from families and relatives was the reason for getting stressed out during the holidays, while 47.8 percent said they felt pressure from relatives' excessive interest in their private lives.
Married people, on the other hand, said they felt more pressure from factors such as financial costs of presents for parents and relatives at 33.3 percent, and difficulties in getting along with in-laws at 32.4 percent.
When asked about who gave them the most stress, 48.8 percent of unmarried respondents picked cousins and other relatives, while 36.2 percent of married respondents picked their spouses.