Korea's work-life balance lags behind other OECD nations

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By Yi Whan-woo

Korea still lags behind other OECD member countries on work-life balance, despite some shifting workplace trends that increasingly value such balance for a healthier and productive lifestyle, a study showed, Sunday.

Published in the latest journal of the government-affiliated Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA), a research paper showed that Korea, among 31 out of the 38 OECD countries assessed in 2021, had the longest working hours while staying in the bottom group concerning after-work free time.

The study was aimed at discovering how salaried workers in Korea can exercise labor rights to flexibly manage work and personal life compared to those in other countries.

Relevant data from the OECD was only available for 31 countries of the 38 OECD countries.

Of the targeted countries for study, Korea had the longest average working time of 1,601 hours per employee annually.

Concerning weekly working hours, 18.9 percent of the employees said they exceeded the maximum limit of 48 hours as recommended by the International Labor Organization (ILO). The rate was more than twice the mean average of the 31 countries at 7.4 percent.

The mean average time for leisure after work was measured at 258 minutes per day for Korea, the shortest among all countries except for Portugal and Lithuania which had 241 minutes and 247 minutes, respectively.

In particular, the daily free time for Korean employees was nearly two hours less than top-placed Norway's at 368 minutes.

Korea correspondingly was placed in the bottom fourth-tier group after KIHASA assessed a set of criteria on the quality of work and life for each country, categorizing each into one of four groups.

The criteria ranged from yearly working hours to overall employment rate, dual-income households, income, child care, paternal-maternal leave and vacation duration and frequency.

The lower group a country was in, the more likely their salaried workers worked long hours with less personal time after work.

A total of nine countries were in the bottom fourth-tier group, including the United States, Canada and Greece.

Of the higher-ranked groups, Denmark and Iceland were in the third-tier group, Estonia and Poland in the second-tier group and Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands at the top of the table.

“Our country's efforts to improve the well-being of workers does not appear to have reached the sufficient level, although the government, management and labor unions altogether have been working hard in recent years,” said Yonsei University sociology professor Han Joon.

He noted the maximum limit of weekly working hours was legally reduced to 52 hours from 68 hours in 2018 during the previous Moon Jae-in administration and rules on overtime hours were tightened to protect workers from being exploited.