A 52-year-old taxi driver died of myocardial infarction, commonly known as a heart attack, resulting from fatigue during the Lunar New Year holiday or “Seollal.”
According to Dongdaemun Police Station, the taxi driver Kim worked for 36 hours without a break from the early morning on Feb. 1 to earn more money for the upcoming holiday, and visited his brother’s house in Dongdaemun, Seoul, without sleeping.
At the family gathering, he played “go-stop,” a popular Korean card game similar to poker, for another straight 10 hours with his brothers. He hadn’t had any sleep for almost two days.
On Feb. 3, he returned to his own home and finally went to bed, but he died and didn’t wake up. Police suspect the long hours of work and gambling without sleeping was the key cause of the heart attack and consequent death of the taxi driver.